Wingham Wildlife Park

Ruth and I went to visit the Wingham Wildlife Park last week. I always have mixed feelings about seeing the animals in wildlife parks, on the one hand I really enjoy seeing them but on the hand I wish they were not in captivity. There were also a lot of birds like the ducks with their ducklings that were just free to come and go.

Here in the Wingham Wildlife Park the enclosures were all pretty good. They are investing in upgrading all the facilities for people and animals since they took over the site.

Website here

I liked the fact that their two lions were rescued from a French circus and that they are involved in other conservation projects.

There is a little bit of everthing in the park including animals like lions, tigers and meerkats, owls and birds of prey a tropical house, otter enclosure, penguins pool and peacocks wandering the site along with exotic chickens.

I found quite a few feathers on the paths walking around, lovely huge goose feathers I think, an owl feather and some from the tropical birds and others I can't identify.

The peacocks seemed to enjoy showing off their beautiful feathers when not chasing the chickens from potential food.

You could buy food for the meerkats, which we did and you can look over their enclosure and drop the food in. I liked that you could get quite close to some of the animals with warnings of course about putting fingers near them.

They have various experience days including one where you can help feed the tigers or be in with the lemurs and photography sessions too.

Birds and Insects exhibition, Andy Malone at the Beaney, Canterbury

 

Visiting Canterbury yesterday I spent a bit of time with friends in the Beaney, Canterbury's revamped
gallery, library and museum. The Beaney website here

In the Front Room exhibition space was work by Andy Malone. I have seen his work a few times and really like his book arts. Other websites with Andy's books include Much Ado Books

Andy Malone takes books like the Observer guides to butterflies or birds, books I remember from childhood, and cuts them up. The birds, or insects or other creatures are left at the top of the pages.


He also cuts out ciggarette cards, forming concertina books and in this exhibition he has collections of matchboxes with cut outs or actual objects in them.

One of his main pieces is a large work having 365 matchboxes, one for each day of the year, filled with cut outs or objects like a feather, or wasp or crab's claw.

They are tactile little boxes making you want to take them down and look more closely at the objects inside.

Andy Malone says on Much ado Books site that :

 "The Observer’s and Ladybird books and cigarette cards, maps and stamps that I use to make my work come from a more innocent age when I would pore over them by night and be out in the countryside looking for their contents by day."  and

"My work is a continuation of that obsession with collecting, cataloging and observing”

The exhibition is on till Sunday 13th April and there is a workshop, Museum in a Matchbox on Saturday 5th April 2014.

Bird paintings at Turner Contemporay

The Turner Contemporary Gallery held another couple of art sessions last week, with stuffed birds as subjects.
Some of the birds came from the collection at Quex Park. I do feel a bit sad when I see stuffed birds and animals, the owl I painted was a bit battered too, but a lot of the children really liked being able to touch some of the birds and were excited by them.

Of course upstairs in the exhibition there are some amazing watercolours of birds that Turner himself painted, which I've mentioned before.


So without trying to think of how good Turner's are, I had a go at a few watercolours of the birds.
I have been enjoying spending time engaged with the art sessions at the gallery and with the fact that people of all ages are welcome and a lot of children and some parents also join in the sessions.

I look forward to the next ones.

Curiosity exhibition at Turner Contemporary Gallery.

I've been back to see the exhibition Curiosity :Art and the Pleasures of Knowing at the Turner Contemporary gallery. I really like the exhibition with it's mix of historical and contemporay exhibits.
Thomas Grunfeld's work Misfit is quite arresting, I wasn't sure if it was a bit too disturbing at first. But I wanted to sketch it all the same.

A sketch of Thomas Grunfeld's sculpture.

It also appeals to the collector in me and some of the items I definately covet. There is for instance a collection of old German glass sea creatures, which is absolutely amazing. The skill of glass blowing and sculpting is amazing from trailing tentacles to sponges.

Similar glass sea creatures to those on show in the exhibition.

Similar sea creature to those on show at the exhibition.

Another display case holds some beautiful agates with their patterns suggesting landscapes.

I'm also appreciating a look at some of Turners work that is not normally exhibited. In the last exhibition it was some drawings from his lectures on perspective and studies of reflections in glass balls. This time there is a wall full of watercolours of birds, paintings I'd never seen before.

One of Turner's studies

They are lovely, very delicate in colour and feel. A lot of head studies and a few birds that had been collected for his studies after they had died.  The dead Jay and Ring Dove have a softness and lightness of touch that speaks to me of care for the birds in his observation.

Another of Turner's bird studies.

I liked Salvatore Arancio's works that had the look of historical engravings from the nineteenth century.  I made a sketch of one of the pieces. Site with an interview and work by Salvatore Arancio here

 A sketch of one of Salvatore Arancio's works.

Laurent Grasso's reproductions of historical photographs of popes and bishops looking through the telescope in the Vatican, really interested me. It started me thinking of the historical links between astrology and astronomy, which were much closer together in the past. Article about his work here

One of Laurent Grassos works.

The exhibition is on till the 15th September and is well worth a visit.

The Dawn Chorus

I got up early one morning on retreat and recorded the dawn chorus. The blackbirds usually start their singing about 4.30am and then the robins, wrens, tits and other birds join in. At the Seekers Trust their singing went on till about 10am and the birds were still active and calling all day.
There is something quite magical standing outside as the sky starts to lighten and the birds are all singing. I'm always surprised at how much noise a small bird like a wren can make!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2zSXq_mZ4A   link to video of the dawn chorus.
I also wrote a number of poems including one about the dawn chorus while I was there.

The Dawn Chorus

From every hedgerow, every field,
from every tree and every weald,
 sounds forth a salutation to the sun
as night times travels now are done.

Blackbird, robin, wren and thrush,
notes pour forth in tidal rush,
linnet warbler, sky lark high,
choral practise in the sky.

Lime tree filled with bird and song
or birdsong shaped as lime tree strong.

Waltham Forest Summer exhibition.

I took my pieces of work down to the Changing Room Gallery for the Waltham Forest Arts group Summer Exhibition. As usual my work is very different from last years. I have been working on some 'wanted' posters, using examples of behaviour that goes against the law in some way, but using birds instead of humans.

This is what I wrote about the work for the exhibition.
In this piece I have explored environmental concerns and social controls through subverting the symbolic "wanted" poster. Though humorous in intent, the work is also a comment on the nature of growing bureaucracy, the freedom of the birds is contrasted with the growing loss of freedom in our own lives. It is also a comment on the human demands for growth and profit that has lead to a decline in some of our most loved birds including the sparrow. We are thus also the "wanted" as declared on the posters.


I mounted the posters on pieces of plywood that have been distressed and look well used.

The exhibition is on from today 1st June till Sunday 7th June at The Changing Room Gallery with a reception/ event on Saturday 6th June.

Birds and Books

Watching the birds on the peanuts and fat balls is endlessly delightful. There are a surprisingly large variety of birds in this, my city garden. Robins and wrens, blue tits and great tits, blackbirds and sparrows, starlings and woodpeckers, magpies and jays, wood pigeons and the ordinary London pigeons, being the main ones.
Along with trees, birds are perhaps one of my other main art themes, and this Christmas I was happy to receive some bird themed presents. Some little drawings here of 2 resin birds.

One of the new books I received is Living Water, Viktor Schauberger and the secrets of natural energy, by Olof Alexandersson. It is an amazing account of Viktor Schauberger's life of investigating the living force and power of water. he was an Austrian naturalist and forester born at the end of the nineteenth century, brought up with a love and immersed in the forests of Austria. His observations of nature and especially the way streams functioned, flowed and carried materials, lead to his developing systems of transporting logs, ways to bring water back to life and ways of controlling the flow of water.
He was passionate about working with the earth not destroying it, and unfortunately, perhaps did not understand that some people could be so wilfully disregarding of the work he did and the understanding he came to.

A few days in St Ives

Last week saw Ruth and I in St Ives. It was a mini holiday, we had been there about 8 or 9 years ago and really loved the town. Tate St Ives was on the list of visits, and fortunately there was a display of Bernard Leach's work there, as the museum of his work was closed for refurbishment.
There was some interesting work from contemporary artists in Cornwall on display in Tate St Ives I am looking at the video work more often as I walk around with my video camera.


The Barbara Hepworth museum and Sculpture garden was again a delight to see. I bought a DVD about her and Bernard Leach, lovely to see Barbara Hepworth in her recently planted garden. The cherry tree only a quarter of the size it is today. And interesting that she states quite strongly that her sculpture is for touching, and for interacting with.
How sad that we are not allowed ( officially ) to climb, lean or touch her work now, when that experience was integral to her conception of the sculptures she made.


I took quite a lot of photos some videos of the sea and water and did some drawing while I was there. I am working on my Bird Diaries. Little books perhaps, that note one of my connecting with the birds around me.