birding-aus

Bird things at Qld Modern Art Gallery

To: "Birding-aus (E-mail)" <>
Subject: Bird things at Qld Modern Art Gallery
From: "Philip Veerman" <>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:30:43 +1100
I was in Brisbane last week and visited the Qld Modern Art Gallery. Some bird 
things were so strange I thought worthy of telling the story. Even though they 
are quite peripheral to the list usual message.

One item was a large display cabinet of many nests of birds, all labelled by 
the scientific name of the bird, however all of the nests have been made out of 
shredded USA $ notes (all green). The nests are man-made of course. Amazingly, 
they all look realistic for the species as labelled, at least at a quick view 
(I had to leave soon to catch the train and plane back to Canberra).

The other thing is pots painted in supposedly aboriginal totemic designs, 
showing birds and other animals. Most designs are more or less believable, 
however one pot, labelled as "Eagles" shows several painted American Bald 
Eagles and another labelled "Owls" shows an owl that I believe to be an Eagle 
Owl or most certainly one of that genus (Bubo) and certainly not anything found 
in Australia. I know aboriginal people have suffered displacement and all that 
sort of thing but I really wonder how in tune are these people with their 
environment and local fauna. Why do they show totemic images of northern 
hemisphere fauna?

Even more obscure was a video showing a rooster and hen eating rice, complete 
with two Asian voices counting each grain as they ate them (total about 900). 
I'm not fibbing, that was the display.

Philip
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