Overhead
Winged new, prints and zines
Bunjil Place Artist Market
Bunjil Place Foyer, 2 Patrick Northeast Drive, Narre Warren
Saturday 3rd of August, 2024
10am–2pm
“So rarely have we discovered that we have overestimated the intelligence of a living thing, so often it is that we discover that we have wildly underestimated the complexity and intelligence of a living creature.”
This Saturday, we’ll be at the Bunjil Place Artist Market, to celebrate the opening of Generation Clay: Reimagining Asian Heritage, with our new print, Chatter, rattle, Noddy terns overhead, created for the 2024 RMIT Print Exchange Portfolio, and an array of our latest artists’ books and zines, including the last copies of Turn a bird, released into the wild during Melbourne Rare Book Week. In readiness, Louise has been cutting down editions of our print with the precision of a tern in pursuit of a sardine. (She has also been cutting down the last two editions of our artists’ book, Restoring corridors, in a week that has seen the ruler and blade called for.)
If you cannot make it to the market in person, you can find a couple of editions of our print, Chatter, rattle, Noddy terns overhead (available for preorder for $50 AUD) and Turn a bird (for $7 AUD) tucked aside in our online store. As ever, all our prints are posted flat, and our zines are wrapped in an envelope with a cardboard insert, to ensure they arrive safely to your door.
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Turn a bird, 2024, zine, photographed by Tim Gresham
There are so many gaps in our knowledge about animal understanding, so many things we humans don’t know. And so, through this new print and zine, we are speaking to this mystery, for when you cannot be a bird, we can only combine what we see, interpret, and read. How do birds know how to migrate? How is this information passed on? How do the parents teach their young?
Chatter, rattle, Noddy terns overhead features several sleek Noddy terns (Anous stolidus) overhead, with the title drawn from their call type and the messages they send to each other and meanings they derive. By the cover of light from a full moon, the Noddy tern is also known to forage for prey, in addition to throughout the day.
Turn a bird invites you to flip the panels to make multiple species from two birds by Silvester Diggles (1817–1880), a Rusty-breasted shrike thrush (Colluricincla Rufigaster), and a Yellow-breasted fly-catcher (Machoerirhinchus flaviventris), from The ornithology of Australia, Volume 1, commencing with Acquila and ending with Smicrornis, ca. 1863–1875 (Museums Victoria), and two birds by John Gould (1804–1881), a Zebra finch (Amadina castanotis, now known as Taeniopygia castanotis), and a Tiwi blue-winged kookaburra (Dacelo (Dacelo) leachii cervina).
On the front and back cover you will find a New Holland creeper, now known as a New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris (Meliornis) novaehollandiae), by Sarah Stone (1760–1844); and a Speckled manakin (Pipra punctata), now known as a Spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus), by George Prideaux Harris (1775–1810).
In the background, there is a portion of an 1892 monotype landscape by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), and the lithograph of the Zebra finch is from part one of Gould’s preliminary work on the birds of Australia of which only two parts were issued. These two parts are now referred to as the ‘Cancelled Plates’ (1837).
Also pictured above, four cards from A new exhibition of beasts with a winged ‘flitter-mouse’ bat, published, London, and sold by John Wallis, no. 16 Ludgate Street (between 1790 and 1804). Housed in a “wooden box lined with pink paper and sliding lid … 29 from a probable 32 hand coloured engraved cards. Each card contains an engraved hand coloured illustration with written description and is manuscript numbered, [though sadly] lacking numbers 27, 31 and 32. Included in the set are five animals from New Holland: The New South Wales Wolf, The Kangaroo Rat of New South Wales, The Spotted Opossum of New South Wales, The Squirrel Opossum and The Flying Opossum of New South Wales”. The ink inscription on verso of box lid reads: “To Charles Gimby, a present from his father 3d. March 1815” (State Library New South Wales).
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Chatter, rattle, Noddy terns overhead (detail), 2024, print
