Artist statement:

Since ancient times birds have been portents, returned lost souls, or harbingers to humans trying to navigate unknowns. Birds, as Delia Falconer writes in Signs and Wonders, are ‘recognised … instinctively as the emissaries of a deep past, much older than we are’ (p. 82): they did evolve from dinosaurs.  In my life Magpies and their warblings are portals connecting to my matriarchal forebears, particularly my great-grandmother who found avian solace after her son’s drowning. This series specifically, turns to magpies as fleshy stand-ins for my lost mother, conjuring fading sentiments of companionship, safekeeping, grounded-ness, and sustaining traditions. With filled pockets, gloves, cloaks and coverings, these magpie-mothers occupy inside(s) and outsides, life and beyond. Despite grief, these are not spectral magpies but real-world embodiments of qualities which guide me, like they did my great-grandmother, of how to live amidst ongoing mourning and honour knowledges from deep pasts; birds and human.