Bird/burden

I thought I heard a bird was curated by Raquel Ormella at Craft ACT. The works in I thought I heard a bird consider what it is to represent without picturing landscape where birds are present or absent. both to focus on the histories birds signify, and what it is to consider the bird as a marker for a landscape and environment. The included works address the theme both conceptually and practically, ranging from paintings to models of realised public works of habitat architecture. I thought I heard a bird continues to evolve, with additional artists and architects and new works being added for a second iteration of the exhibit scheduled for October 2020 in Hobart, Tasmania. For this exhibition, Eriksmoen developed 4 new original artworks specifically addressing the issue of habitat reduction and loss for Australian native birds, and an imagined future without birdlife. The piece "Edge Conditions 2" is a park bench reminiscent of a bird hide or bird blind. However, it is clearly not camouflaged with natural tree branched or foliage, rather with the salvaged parts of abandoned timber furniture, assembled in a neo-natural screen and spray-painted green. The bench itself is an edge where humans and birds overlap, each finding their habitat in the urban setting. The work speaks of an ambivalent position of humans in relation to nature and wildlife in relationship to architecture in the shared and contested space of the urban environment: whose space is it, and who is watching who?