The works from the series ‘hoodwinks and lyres’ are based on an idea about the interaction and interrelationship between humans and animals, nature and culture, that has existed for centuries within the practice of falconry. The works act as metaphors of the struggle for control over nature, the imprecise and empirical endeavours to harness the wildness of the raptor. The raptors wear elaborate hoods, not to disguise their identity, but to temporarily emasculate their innate wildness.
Falconry is a way of humanity harnessing wild nature. It is not domestication or taming. It is a way of working with nature that pays respect to both species, human and beast. Arguably it is for the benefit of both species.
The work also touches upon the anthropomorphic tendencies that dwell in the human psyche. The raptors are drawn head and shoulders, a composition equivalent to the ‘bust’ in classical portraiture. It is conceivable to attribute human qualities to these ‘raptor portraits’. They could appear disdainful, aloof, stoic, even contemplative. Anthropomorphism assists us in relating to the natural world, aids our comprehension and assimilation of the natural world order to a human order, a hierarchy of humanity, where we sit at the pinnacle, looking down.
It is impossible to imagine a different world, destabilised to a point where humanity is looked down upon by the natural world, where we are not in control.
‘Perhaps what is suggested in this work is that nature has become a silent witness to the destabilising forces that humanity exerts upon this world’.
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