Canvas, acrylic, oil, feathers, cotton.
While unpacking boxes containing decades of collected material can be a laborious dust filled task, it was with unexpected pleasure that I rediscovered some little treasures including this one. I don't recall making it but I know it was in my second year of post grad while studying for my MVA (Master of Visual Arts) at VCA (Victorian College of the Arts). It is a collection of feathers that have been sewn and painted on to small strips of canvas, which in turn have been sewn together. I am thinking of adding to it, making it a quite large piece.
This little treasure I have labeled 'Flock' taps in to something I have been thinking about for a while now, that is systems of classification and mans desire to create order and clarity in nature. I notice that even the humble garden is something that must be orderly, clipped and contained. I like that man has to document, collect and classify everything in his world and beyond in order for him to understand his position in it. Of course most of these concepts are relatively new, within the last couple of centuries. Once man rejected God as the creator of life on earth he looked at the earth itself and discovered science. This is probably an overly simplistic version of events, but I am interested in that period of change and discovery where man stopped looking to the heavens and began to note the world in which he lived.
All of this thinking has lead me to examine my own collections and systems of classification and how I might go about my own analysis of them. Meanwhile I am still in the process of sorting through the collections and wondering exactly how sort, document, categorise and store them.
