• Home
  • Blog
  • Cafe
  • Studio
  • Framing
  • Contact
  Bon Papillon

Spurtle speaks

10/5/2013

 
PictureJanet Melrose, 'Rookery'
A great review below from the Spurtle:
(I have included the paintings that Alan mentions in his piece, but there are so many more to see; you are bound to have another favourite...!)

PictureKittie Jones, 'Wagtail on shadows'
CROWS, ROOKS, AND THE OVERLOOKED
Friday, 10 May 2013


The brief to artists for this month's exhibition 'Neighbourhood Birds' at Bon Papillon was to depict 'birds of garden and field that are often overlooked and victimized'.

The result is an aviary of at least 20 put-upon species, including a peacock. Clearly, some artists have bigger gardens or are more flexible about briefs than others.
What appear here are a very few favourites, chosen from a list which could easily have included 10 more using an interesting variety of techniques and media.

First among beakfuls is Stanley Bird's 'Pied Pigeon not Pigeon Pie' (above right) – an exquisite study in accurate detail strangely de-contextualised or re-contextualised by the addition of a patterned background.
The effect is rather odd. I find feral pigeons – their proximity, omniverous cheek, and nauseating deformities – rather unsettling at the best of times. To find one, as here, apparently roosting on a wardrobe rail – capable of flight in an interior space, defiantly out of place and inedible – is doubly so. The work made me smile and flinch simultaneously.

Less unnerving, but also playing on birds' sudden jerks from stillness into motion, is Kittie Jones's 'Wagtail in Shadows' (below). I liked this creature's capacity to flit between the bars, to exist at once in the real world of hard edges and smudgier light. This is a very simple but satisfying work in watercolour and gouache.

Simplicity also characterises Leo du Feu's apparently straightforward field observation in 'Kingfisher Study II' (below). The stripping-down of form into blocks of colour is wonderfully effective here, although there is more going on than meets the eye. Du Feu's bird is slightly squatter, its bill more assegai-like than one would find in nature. This is a human reaction to, and interpretation of, the bird in its surrounds. Strict visual taxonomy it's not.

There are in this exhibition a great many corvids – rooks, crows and magpies dominate the show. What this says about artists in general, Scottish artists in particular, art-buying Scots or the tastes of the gallery owners I don't know. However, corvids – with their uncompromising stares and disquieting intelligence – are certainly a rich source of inspiration.

Below is Susan Smith's uno print 'The Rook'. Who could resist this bird's glittering eye, its violent malice, the delicious spray of blood and tissue splattering a wooden altar? Well, certainly not this reviewer. Perhaps because I was hungry.

Finally, we come to Janet Melrose's 'Rookery'. I grew up in the shadow of just such a stand of elms, and well recall the raucous garrulity of its inhabitants swaying unperturbed in even the fiercest gales. Melrose depicts the flock perhaps returning at dusk. Who, one wonders, has left the trails which link the foreground to the trees? Do these paths lead from safety into danger? Or is the person in the woods himself a source of threat, lurking in the shadows, a shotgun at his shoulder, loaded, deadly and waiting to fire?  AM

Neighbourhood Birds continues at Bon Papillon (15 Howe Street) until 1 June.

Have you got a different favourite in this exhibition? If so, write to us and say why via email: spurtle@hotmail.co.uk Twitter: @theSpurtle  Facebook: Broughton Spurtle 


Picture
Leo du Feu, 'Kingfisher study'
Picture
Stanley Bird, 'Pied pigeon not pigeon pie'
Picture

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Ingrid, and Stu sometimes

    Archives

    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.