Birds & Language Projects 2014-ongoing

Madeleine Kelly Spectra of birds 2014-15
 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 40 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery. Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA
Spectra of birds 2014-15
 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 40 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Purchased 2015 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: Queensland Art Gallery. Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA

I regularly publish visual art-focused critiques that contribute to current thought by examining and reflecting on the changing relationships between humans and nature. My key project, Birds & Language, is an extension of this research and has involved making abstract bird sculptures and working in cross-disciplinary and inclusive ways.

 

 

Through Birds & Language, I bring together artists, thinkers and conservationists, providing an opportunity to build grounds for a cross-disciplinary encounter between the natural sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. I lead research in unique fusions of linguistics, ornithology, evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, music, and so on, extending and challenging existing hierarchies and moving the parameters of visual art practice into exciting new transdisciplinary ways of working.

 

 

These bird projects have included:

  • A two-day Birds and Language Conference hosted by USyd SACE (co-convened with Ian Maxwell) with international and national attendees and presenters. The two days concluded with an online pop-up exhibition (due to COVID-19 restrictions). The conference and exhibition were an enormous success, with significant external reach: 346+ registrations and 70 in attendance (two days). From Darwin to Tasmania, 20 writers and 20 artists contributed to this national event.
  • A major exhibition, Birds and Language, at one of NSW’s largest regional art museums, Wollongong Art Gallery, supplemented by special events and accompanied by a 15-page colour catalogue (print), which included my 2800-word critical curatorial essay about 21 artists, previewed in Artist Profile Magazine.
  • Following this, Jen Valender and I edited a ‘Birds and Language’ edition of Unlikely – Journal for Creative Arts. Unlikely is run by The University of Melbourne and is a prestigious transdisciplinary journal, which aims to open unexpected spaces for artistic exchange and scholarly conversations across mediums, disciplines and continents (Issue 08). We published 17 double-blind peer-reviewed scholarly essays and 14 media-rich creative research projects in the Project Space.

My bird artworks are an ongoing diary of sorts, and belong to significant public collections: Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; the University of Queensland Art Museum; the University of Wollongong Art Collection and the Queensland Children’s Hospital. In these sculptures painted with encaustic wax, abstract images of birds primarily spotted in Australia are squeezed or trapped into the rectilinear architecture of empty Tetra Paks. The resulting expressionist distortions – angular in shape as determined by the cartons – are half bird and half cultural object, suggesting the continual commodification of nature, a world gradually destroying itself, and the transformation of rubbish. In capitulating to the cartons’ open spouts, the birds embody the phantasmatic property of everyday materials replete with associative meanings of myth and consumerism. Two modes of identity – birds/cartons and art / consumer material – are sustained simultaneously in a single object.

From an art-historical perspective, the planes of colour recall the work of Color Field painter Ellsworth Kelly who attributes his minimal colour abstractions and the titles of his works to birdwatching as a young boy with his grandmother. Yet, in contrast to the restraint of formalist colour field painting, these birds might be said to return abstraction to its counterpart in nature, producing effects whereby the different permutations of colour and combinations of form embrace diversity, visual analogy and the aesthetic quality of these remarkable animals. The category depends on the intersection of birds that are seen and are therefore made, but their squashed states also suggest a crisis – those endangered, betrayed or disappeared.

Leipzig birds 2016-17 Encaustic  on cardboard with paper 23 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable

Leipzig birds 2016-17

Woodcock, Spatz (Sparrow), Eisvogel (Kingfisher), Goldammer (Yellow hammer), Amsel, Elster (Magpie), Kleiber (Eurasian nuthatch), Krähe, Amsel (Black bird), Kuckuck (Cuckoo), Schwarzspecht (black woodpecker), Weißstorch (White stork), Seidenschwanz (Waxwing), Mandarinente (Mandarin duck), Kohlmeise (Great tit), Firecrest, Garden warbler, Schwan (Swan), Mauersegler (Swift), Blaumeise (Blue tit), Mittelspecht (Medium spotted woodpecker), Buntspecht (Great woodpecker), Kleinspecht (Lesser pied woodpecker), Grunspecht (Green woodpecker), Unidentified bird.

Birds of the D’Aguliar Range 2017 Encaustic  on cardboard with paper 14 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 30 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable. Collection, University of Queensland Art Gallery

Birds of The D’Aguilar Range 2017, Collection: University of Queensland Art Museum

Bush stone-curlew, Blue-faced honeyeater, Crested pigeon, Sulphur-crested cockatoo, Eastern koel, Pheasant cuckoo, Pied butcherbird, Purple crowned pigeon, Sacred kingfisher, Forest kingfisher, Great egret, Australasian figbird, Wompoo fruit dove, Common starling.

Madeleine Kelly Pelagic Birds 2017
Pelagic birds 2017, Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text 23 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable Photograph Bernie Fischer.​​

Pelagic birds 2017, Collection: University of Wollongong

Southern giant-petrel, Northern giant-petrel, Cape petrel, Great-winged petrel, Fairy prion, Fluttering shearwater, Hutton’s shearwater, Wandering albatross, Gibson’s albatross, Black-browed albatross, White-capped albatross, Campbell albatross, Indian yellow-nosed albatross, White-faced storm-petrel (x2), Australasian gannet, Little pied cormorant, Pied cormorant, Little black cormorant, Australian pelican, Silver gull, Crested tern, White-fronted tern, Tern.

Madeleine Kelly Canberra Birds: Cute craft for the archive of painting 2018-19 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text. 17 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable
Canberra Birds: Cute craft for the archive of painting 2018-19 Encaustic on cardboard with paper and text. 17 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 27 x 9 x 9cm; installed dimensions variable

Canberra birds: Cute craft for the painting archive 2018 encaustic on cardboard and brick 19 parts ranging from 8 x 11 x 11 to 27 x 27 x 9 cm (birds)

 

Wee bill, White browed scrubwren, European gold finch, House sparrows (male and female), Willy wagtail, Pee wee lark, Latham’s snipe, Buff-banded rail, Baby crimson rosella, Red wattle bird, Pied currawong, Little corella, Grey teal, Dusky moore hen, Australasian coot, Black shouldered kite, Pacific black duck.

Madeleine Kelly Barren Grounds 2015 Encaustic on cardboard with paper 12 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 9 x 9cm x 23; installed dimensions variable
Barren Grounds 2015 Encaustic on cardboard with paper 12 parts ranging from approximately 8 x 11 x 11cm to 9 x 9cm x 23; installed dimensions variable

Barren Grounds 2015, collection Queensland Children’s Hospital

Eastern whipbird, Pilot bird, Yellow-tailed black cockatoo, Brown thornbill, Beautiful firetail, Lyrebird, Grey fantail, White-throated treecreeper, King parrot, Eastern bristlebird, Female bowerbird and Rufous whistler.

GOMA QLD publication.

Spectra of Birds 2014-15, Collection, QAGOMA

 

Birds seen in the Illawarra, NSW: Welcome swallow, Superb fairy-wren, Crimson rosella, Red-browed finch, Green catbird, Purple swamphen, Sooty oystercatcher, New Holland honeyeater, Great cormorant, Satin bowerbird, Eastern whipbird, Australian pelican, Laughing kookaburra, Rainbow lorikeet, Spotted pardalote, Magpie, Eastern yellow robin, Bassian thrush, Eastern rosella, Cattle egret, White-faced heron (Blue Crane), Crested tern, White-browed scrubwren, Variegated fairy-wren, Fan-tailed cuckoo, Lewin’s honeyeater, Golden whistler, White-headed pigeon, Brown cuckoo dove, Scarlet honeyeater, Eastern spinebill, Black-faced cuckoo-shrike, Red-whiskered bulbul, Pied cormorant, Noisy miner, Dollarbird, Galah, Scrub turkey, Masked lapwing (Plover), Tawny frogmouth.