An exhibition of new works by South Australian artist Rita Hall further explores her interest in the bird specimen collection at the South Australian Museum. With a tribute to the art of Giorgia Morandi, Rita has developed a series of enigmatic images incorporating birds into still life arrangements with a beautiful aesthetic. Exquisite small works in oils and contrasting large charcoal drawings explore the innate delight of birds in an astonishing new context. Always mindful of the audience response to her art, Rita has become aware that confronting depictions of dead birds has been universally rejected, despite the artistic integrity of the works. Rita has wished to cause the audience to see the birds as beautiful objects like other objects presented in still life compositions. They have, for her, become loaded with complexities not only as icons of the natural world but as formal elements of shape, colour and patterns, equal to any arrangement of fruit or flowers. A wild bird is a living treasure, living and dying as part of the natural life cycle. But to see it as a part of a tagged collection, bearing a catalogued number and presented as a stuffed specimen is disturbing. That is the truth of the matter. How did it get there? Into a collection drawer? Now that it is not a pretty flying thing, it is a subject for science. Rita believes it is still is a beautiful object, its feathers never change colour, its wings are still intact, its little beak remains firm, it is now dormant. A wonderful thing to draw and paint, it can have a new life in art. The big bold charcoal drawings are made directly from the Museum specimens and can be seen as a precursor to the intimate paintings in oil on canvas of still life compositions. Birds appear in all of the works, some obviously dead others flying playfully about the static bowls and bottles. They have become part of the arrangements. The artist always has her mind on the qualities of paint, colour, texture and pleasing traditional composition. Morandi has shown Rita the way to find the art magic in the simple things, allowing less in order to find more. Some works have no bowls just birds bouncing around the canvas, others are wrapped in lace, ribbons or reeds, suggesting alternative still life projections. These works could be seen as offering the birds in the context of gifts or symbolic treasures. The essence and substance of this new exhibition has been to explore the birds again through paintings in the same way that Morandi explored his beloved bowls and bottles to make his exquisite art. This show is as much a tribute to Morandi as it is to the nature of our physical and metaphysical worlds.
0 Comments