Pressed Wings.

{At @museumvictoria, where Albertus Seba's collection momentarily appears to spill off the page as a tangle of cords and Harriet Scott's venomous Brown-banded snake (Hoplocephalus Curtus) performs the Dance of the Corkscrew on the page.}

Research for Pressed Wings, a collaborative artists’ book of Australian avialae, with lepidosauria, lepidoptera and marsupialia sightings, is underway, sparked in no small part by yesterday's appointment at the Melbourne Museum to see an assortment of delicate owls, Gould's velveteen bilbies and round-rumped, rust-hued marsupials, and the putrid and lurid, green-toed possums stretched splendid and proud across the pages of Seba.

Though it will be a little while before we've fruit to show for what we saw (I mean, sowed) and later intend (to harvest), I can tell you that this new work will brim with Australian birds of great beaked and taloned variety, alongside the occasional reptile, insect and marsupial. One part homage to Gould, Cotton, Dampier, the Scott sisters and their ilk, to one part play (with the scientific facts), we hope to highlight those marvellous, awe-inspiring souls as perhaps being not so very different from ourselves. (The shelter we seek, the lives we lead, the sustenance we need, the patterns we form, the knowledge we hold: are not we all more similar than not?)

The first natural history book printed in Australia by John Lewin; John Gould's ornithological accounts alongside Elizabeth Gould’s illustrations; the sketches of John Cotton (specific to the Port Phillip district); the hand-coloured lithograph plates of Sylvester Diggles; the chromolithograph plates of Gracius Broinowski; the hand-coloured plates of Gregory Mathews: ornithological illustrations! You beauties! You curious natural productions! Alf Malherbe and your incredible Woodpecker compositions (Monographie des picidées, 1861–62). Perhaps awe is too short a word after all.And were that I could draw fine antenna so. Harriet and Helena Scott, with your Australian Lepidosauria, Lepidoptera, and Marsupialia, we've not forgotten you either. Louise, the challenge for you to accept.

As with all plans for a new work and our own proven working pattern, at some point we anticipate that the narrative trail will inform the direction of the illustrational expedition and visa-versa. The length of the work is undecided. But it has wings! As the project takes shape, we may decide to include more than one species on the page. We may include extinct species, and we may include now-threatened species (in light of habitat loss and changing conditions) as we become our own library-bound, head-spinning, amateur twitchers. Pencils and scissors at the ready!

Melbourne Museum, you made us a sponge. And all shaped by what we saw first-hand yesterday. Thank-you.




























{Thank-you @museumvictoria for showing us your tiny birds with 'shoulders' like coral (Histoire naturelle des Oiseaux-Mouches by René Primevère Lesson); the lurid splendour of The Birds of Australia, comprising three hundred full-page illustrations, with a descriptive account of the life and characteristic habits of over seven hundred species, by Gracius J. Broinowski, volume III; Gould's Satin bower-birds (Ptilonorhynchus holosericeus), known for their "loud liquid call"; the noble Red Wallaroo (Osphranter antilopinus) of the Coburg Peninsula and other handsome delights. It was a magical thrill.}