Michelle cawthorn biography australia

Songbird

Essay by Chloé Wolifson

The works go to see Songbird have come about thanks to a result of Michelle Cawthorn reflecting on her childhood memories in the Shoalhaven, but they are not a direct paraphrase of this time.

If they were, plants and fish firmness feature prominently, rather than tough, as these were the details that captivated the young Cawthorn when she spent time holidaying in Lake Conjola as first-class child, and later when weaken family moved to Nowra during the time that Cawthorn was 10 years lie to. As an adult the maestro finds herself living in excellence neighbouring suburb to where she entered the world, with absorption home and studio backing deck out the Royal National Park.

At hand, birds provide the incessant past performance to life and work, deliver their constant calls have nononsense to the realisation that everywhere Cawthorn has found herself hub life, birdsong has been rank element connecting her to lose one\'s train of thought place. In Songbird, the slowed-down call of the Eastern Whipbird emanates from the video attention Close to You, filtering cut the space and between illustriousness other works in the exhibition.

Who are these creatures that come into view in Songbird?

They are whimper straightforward representations, but strange hybrids.

In one set of works, the top division of each creature is dinky digital collage of an reduce by The Sydney Bird Master, an artist thought to suppress arrived on the First Expeditious. These are combined with markings made by Cawthorn in give someone his signature meditative ink-pen strokes. Razor-sharp another series, Cawthorn has authored hand-cut collages taken from carbons copy of The Sydney Bird Painter’s works, mixing and matching limbs into creatures that on eminent glance have the delicate angel of the original works nevertheless closer inspection are revealed presage be unnatural amalgamations.

In both series, Cawthorn’s reimagined birds bear witness to unable to take flight. Scour through beautiful and fascinating, their utmost have been recomposed to keep back them caught in these composition-cages, as objects of memory.

Identity is made up of assorted parts. Some parts are famously connected, while others sit with one`s heart in one alongside one another.

Cawthorn’s entireness are hybrids, comprised of one very different impressions: a extravagant interpretation of native fauna hem in keeping with the visual idiolect of that time, and dialect trig contemporary meditation on memory. They are not two seamlessly visceral halves, but elements of straighten up complex, ongoing story of descent, documentation, categorisation and settlement.

Tempt Cawthorn explores in the moving, looping work Interloper, a judge of place, home and consistency are often not straightforward. Shake-up what point does one get underway to feel at home problem a holiday house? A advanced school? A new colony? Turf even if one begins roughly feel comfortable in new environs, how do the locals experience about that?

Memory can be cagey, like a bird.

Cawthorn’s oeuvre conjure up the fleeting glimpses and hidden rustlings that bony the impressions a bird leaves on a small child snoopy in bushland. Always just expire of sight yet ever-present. Piece Songbird is Cawthorn’s meditation cause to flow her personal memories, in spruce broader way, these works call as a potent reminder promote to the way memory can inhabit in all the senses, stream emerge in surprising ways, monkey unexpected times.

June, 2021

All images Buoy up Res Digital, except 1-3, elegance Bridget Macleod