This weekend is the last chance to see the exhibition Year of the Bird at Maitland Regional Gallery, New South Wales which Kate Foster and I submitted joint work emerging from Fashioning Feathers to.

Curated by Helen Hopcroft and Caelli Jo Brooker, the exhibition  Year of the Bird features art work by Vanessa Barbray, Caelli Jo Brooker, Marian Drew, Kate Foster, David Hampton, Helen Hopcroft, Pamela See, Emma van Leest, Trevor Weekes and Helen Wright.

You can see more on the Year of the Bird Exhibition Blog – including an account of by Kate Foster and myself about “Looking at the Hummingbird Cabinet“

Dr Rod Bennison, CEO of Minding Animals International, will be opened the Year of the Bird exhibition on Saturday 23rd February, 2013.

A catalogue is available.

A recent vein of creative historical research has reconsidered ‘the limits and location of any set of materials determined as “archive”’ (Lorimer 2009). Within this body of work, researchers have highlighted that material encounters and material entities can be rich resources for historical recovery (Kurtz 2001; Till 2001; DeSilvey 2006, 2007b; Featherstone 2004; Hill 2006a, 2006b, 2007; Lorimer 2006; Yusoff 2008).

In my own writing (Patchett 2008; Patchett and Foster 2008; Patchett 2012) I have argued that specimen artefacts can be used as object-based archives. When studied up close, craft-made objects begin to suggest the practices of their making:

The following photographs of a millinery ostrich plume show evidence of willowing:

‘Willowing’ consisted of lengthening the short strands, called flues, of inferior feathers by tying on one, two or three flues until the feather has the desired depth and grace.

A poem – The Plumes that Pay – from the Sorrowful Rhymes of Working Children 1911 underlines the exploitation of children employed in doing “finishing work” for feather manufacturers:

How doth the manufacturer

Improve the ostrich tail?

By willowing the scraggy ends

Until they’re fit for sale.

How cheerfully he sits and smiles

Throughout the livelong day,

While children knot the tiny flues

And make the plumes that pay.

For more on ‘willowing work ‘read

Elizabeth C. Watson ‘Homework in the Tenements‘  Survey 25 (4 February 1911), 772-781

Time and place: Nov 28, 2012 12:15 PM – 01:30 PM, Room 425 P. A. Munch’s building

Click the link for more details:

http://www.uio.no/english/research/interfaculty-research-areas/kultrans/news/events/seminars/2012/museological9.html

I recently contributed a specimen to Preserved! an online collection exploring Cultures of Preservation curated by Petra Lange-Berndt.

The collection emerged from the AHRC Research Network The Cultures of Preservation. From 2010 to 2012 taxidermists, artists, historians of art and science, curators and London-based institutions such as the Natural History Museum, the Hunterian Museum and the Grant Museum of Zoology collaborated for two workshops and a conference. It has been the aim of the network to consider the hybrid status anatomical and zoological specimens, for instance pickled organs or mounted skins, with regards to their aesthetics and to their cultural and political significances.

I submitted an entry about a Blue Bird of Paradise specimen I viewed when I visited New York in the spring as part of my research into the history of the plumage trade for the Fashionign feathers project. The specimen, held in New York Vintage’s permanent collection,  became wildly famous after it perched atop the head of Carrie Bradshaw during the wedding scenes of Sex and the City: The Movie, acting as her something blue.

“I was in New York on the hunt for birds-of-paradise. While their natural habitat is over 9000 miles away in the rain forests of Papua New Guinea, I had it on good authority that I could find some particularly intriguing examples at famed Chelsea fashion emporium New York Vintage. NYV is, according to their website, “the ultimate source worldwide for the finest Vintage Couture and Designer Clothing and Accessories”. Their hand-selected permanent archive, which spans over 100 years of fashion history, is the destination of choice for film and TV costume designers in search of that special something. The day I visited the special something I was in pursuit of was an extremely rare Blue Bird-of-paradise. Though rare, the millinery specimen became wildly famous after it perched atop the head of Carrie Bradshaw during the ill-fated wedding scenes of Sex and the City: The Movie, acting as her something blue.”

To read more visit: http://www.preservedproject.co.uk/blue-bird-of-paradise/

The feature image and the following spatial pan of the exhibition are by the exhibition designer Michelle Weremczuk:

Contributors include: Amanda Boetzekes, Kate Foster, Liz Gomez, Kirsteen Greer, Hayden Lorimer, Kate MccGwire, Marine Pacault, Merle Patchett, Rachel Poliquin, Perdita Phillips, Andrea Roe and Maria Whiteman.

Their papers deal with the intersections of fashion and taste; capitalism and colonialism; science, crafts and popular culture; species, bodies and imagined creatures; and exhibitions and pedagogy via objects as well as materiality and virtuality.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35723494@N04/6850812632/sizes/c/in/set-72157629214786968/

This show will be different than the original FAB show as we are incorporating RAM collections into the show. We are making the most the the RAM’s fantastic Natural History specimens – using them to tell stories about the natural histories of the birds killed and traded in the plumage trade.

Liz and I are currently working with RAM curators Cathy Roy (Canadian History) and Jocelyn Huddon (Natural History) to select RAM objects (both millinery and natural history specimens) that extend, develop and juxtapose with the works of the original exhibition. Cathy and Jocelyn told us this will be the first time an exhibition makes use of their human history and natural history collections simultaneously in the one show.

Here are some photographs documenting our time spent in the RAM collections selecting objects and beginning to group them for case display:

In the presentation I will be discussing the conception, curation and installation of Fashioning Feathers…