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ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 38 | April 1999


Theatre artists Christy Shelper and George Filev

Exhibitions

Birds!

The National Library's current exhibition, Birds!, was launched on 5 March with a charming performance by Physical Theatre artists Christy Shelper and George Filev (pictured right) who, dressed as sulphur-crested cockatoos, swung from a column of material attached to the ceiling in the Library's marble foyer.

The exhibition contains more than 200 items—most of them drawn from the Library's own collections. It features watercolours, lithographs, prints, oil paintings, books, scientific illustrations, bookplates and photographs. It showcases several of the Library's treasures: the Hunter sketchbook, the Lycett album, and John Lewin's Birds of New Holland and Birds of New South Wales. There is also a selection of work by Aboriginal Australians that includes a life-size reproduction of a rock painting, a bark painting, several sculptures and two pots from Hermannsburg.

Some of the people whose work is featured in the exhibition are well known artists such as Ellis Rowan, and Elizabeth and John Gould but Birds! also displays the paintings of lesser known people such as Lilian Medland, and Gregory Macalister Mathews who, in 1939, donated his invaluable ornithological library, which includes many rare books and original watercolours, to the National Library.

The exhibition was curated by Dr Elizabeth Lawson who is the author of The Natural Art of Louisa Atkinson. Atkinson was a watercolour painter, illustrator, writer, naturalist and taxidermist working in the mid nineteenth century and two of her works are in the exhibition.

Birds! is divided into eight sections, each with a text panel giving general information about the material in that particular section. The first panel gives an introduction to the exhibition as a whole and in it Dr Lawson states that this exhibition is about birds that sing and fly in the human imagination and is only indirectly about birds in the world around us.

The second section—Brilliant Curiosities—highlights the growing early nineteenth-century interest in the science of ornithology and the opportunity it provided for women artists—banned from life-drawing classes because of their gender—who found natural history offered suitably genteel subjects for their talents.

At the time, scientific activity was centred in London and Europe, but the artists there were working from skins, whereas those in the colony had the advantage of observing the birds in their natural habitat. Thus Australian field sketches were the first to reflect a genuine understanding of posture, movement and behaviour.

Another section of the exhibition highlights the many uses to which birds were put besides scientific observation. On display is Nicholas Chevalier's unforgettable dress design for Lady Barkly, who was the wife of Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria from 1856 to 1863; one of Donald Friend's diaries with a tongue-in-cheek entry about a delicious parrot pie; and a kookaburra fan such as Victorian ladies used to protect their delicate complexions from the heat of the fire.

The exhibition also features several photographs from the National Photographic Index of Australian Birds, including one by Donald Trounson who originated the idea of a twentieth-century photographic equivalent of John Gould's Birds of Australia.

The two hundred years of white settlement of Australia has coincided exactly with the flowering of print culture and the development of the science of ornithology but it has also coincided with the unparalleled destruction of Australian birds and their habitats.

Although the exhibition closes on 20 June, you can visit the online version at any time by accessing the Library's home page at http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/birds/