Catalogue
Essay
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The
Emu Hunter c.13 000BC
Dangurrung, Mt Brockman, Northern Territory rock
painting.
Photography by George Chaloupka
Courtesy of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern
Territory
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Birdsthe
only creatures of our earth with the gifts of both flight
and songwere flying and singing across the great southern
continent (only recently called Australia) for millions
of years before humans heard them. Potent symbols of the
natural world, their flight and endurance also make them
symbols of the human spirit. Their lives seem to us numinous
and eternal, but they are dangerously threatened by our
activities.
This
exhibition is about birds that fly and sing in the Australian
imagination. Its images may vividly remind us of the birds
that live in the world around us, but they also trace our
changing attitudes to birds and our practical, scientific
and artistic uses of birds. Even ornithological illustration
is only illustration. While it reminds us of birds we recognise,
it equally reveals passing artistic values and a 'scientific'
way of seeing which contrasts strikingly, for instance,
with Aboriginal bird drawings. Even today, a 'bird in the
hand' is often held to be 'worth two in the bush', but the
'hand' of this exhibition is more that of the artist than
of the shooter, collector, taxidermist or more recent bird
bander.
The
colonisation of Australia coincided with the development
of the new European bird science, ornithology, and of a
wide popular interest in birds. It also coincided with the
flowering of print culture: illustrative engraving, lithographic
and other colour-print technologies, fine book-making and
photography. Today, just as these arts face the radical
challenge of new electronic technologies, this exhibition
presents a retrospective of images of birds produced by
that period of spectacular art and paper work. Most of the
birds of this story come from the diverse European-Australian
collections in the National Library of Australia; from European
scientific and artistic traditions recreated progressively
within our colonial and recent pasts. Generous loans of
modern Aboriginal bird sculptures and paintings show that
ancient indigenous and younger European forms have existed
side by side in Australia, but have only recently begun
to learn from one another. The image of the rock painting
The Emu Hunter of 15 000 years ago, photographed
by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory,
attests to the breathtaking antiquity of Australian culture.
In the light of this painting, the birds of a medieval manuscript
from fifteenth-century Europe spring into recent time. Following
these historic images from the two great streams of our
traditionindigenous and Europeanthe collections of the
National Library go on to tell their story of birds and
modern Australia.
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