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Panel 8

FABULOUS BIRDS

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, bird art developed an overt empathy with native creatures, moving from the contained naturalism of scientific illustration to art for art's sake. From this time, artists actively explored the emotive and symbolic values of the natural world. Lacking the powerful history and knowledge of Aboriginal art, this Australian art nevertheless asserts new emotional bonds.

Alien, gravely threatened, diminishing, birds yet proclaim their air and lands. They sing, converse, mimic. They gather and build. Free from the constraints of gravity, they circle the world on their extraordinary migrations. Their lives seem numinous, fabulous.

For all the revelatory power of our two great traditions of bird art, Aboriginal and European, the lives of birds remain mysterious. Nothing we make of them—ceremonial artefact, ornament, trophy, picture, story, exhibition—holds them.

Our lists and poems name them and never finally name them.

Ellis RowanLilian MedlandLionel Lindsay

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A selection of images from BIRDS!
National Library of Australia.
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Copyright: © National Library of Australia 1999