The Birds
Leanne Williams, Susan Jowsey, Fiona Lascelles
November 5 - December 13 , 2004

The Birds
“The taste for collecting is like a game played with utter passion.”
Maurice Rheims, La Vie Etrange des Objets.

‘The Pleasure Hunters’ collaboration are drawn to manifestations of desire reflected primarily in the Victorian ideal of the Garden, a concept defined by ones ability to accumulate the ‘useless’, surpassing functionalism. In this way, the exotic became the domain of the elite, an indulgent past time, a dalliance with all that was beautiful and decorative.

Playing on a fanatical desire to resurrect nature in all its extraordinary wonder, we have become collectors. Wooed by that other aspect of nature so frequently imitated, the Pleasure Hunters marvel at ‘The Birds’, seen promenading amidst the flora and fauna. Representing the tamed and both wild innocence and aggression, the ensnared birds are defined by and imprisoned in their flamboyant cacophony.

Both benign and menacing, (as in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 nightmare, The Birds), there is an underlying sense of desperation as we explore the disintegrating relationship between the individual and nature. As collectors, we are desirous of revamping nature to fit an image that is both ornamental and pleasing on the eye, where ‘seeing’ is a transformative process involving pleasure, pain, longing and power.

Reviews, Essays & Articles

The Birds
Artscene, The Package, 25 November - 1 December, 2004