Welcome Swallow II
Welcome Swallow II
YEAR. 2024
MEDIUM. charcoal on cement fibreboard
DIMENSIONS. 110 x 134cm
EXHIBITION HISTORY.
2024 SHELTER - TILT commission, with Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Goolugatup Heathcote, WA
COLLECTION. City of Melville
This work is part of a body of works for the 2024 TILT commission. SHELTER is a coming together of new artworks by partners in life and sometimes work, Richardson and Abdullah. These coalescing bodies of works collage impressions, fleeting though distinctive, of some of Western Australia’s least glamorous, though closest-to-home birdlife - through the lenses of the artists’ lived and imaginative suburban and rural experiences of place.
The humble Kanamit (in Noongar), or Welcome Swallow, earned its English name – and status as the bird most tattooed on human flesh - from sailors, drunk with relief at the sight of these red-faced, agile flyers - so often the first harbingers of land ahoy. Seafarers’ romanticism aside, these creatures are today widely resented for plaguing our infrastructure with their notoriously disease-ridden refuges – and marking their territories thick with droppings.
For a young Anna Louise Richardson, they were avian housemates whose cup-like cocoons of dried mud would adorn the eaves of her home on the family farm in the outskirts of Perth. The earthen armature of these nests so quaintly fitted with materials borrowed from the human and natural worlds the species readily move between - hair, fabric, stuffing, grass, feathers, fur - were accessible sources of wonder for Richardson and her sister as they watched generations of families hatch, grow and discover their dynamic language of flight. Reimagining, or re-seeing, these commonplace native, now invasive, fauna through the artists’ youthful eyes - and through the wide eyes of Richardson and Abdullah’s own children - enables a refreshing appreciation of their beauty and ingenuity.
Richardson’s observations of Welcome Swallows are writ large through the gallery: a series of their nimble-winged and beguiling airborne formations are depicted in charcoal on cement fibreboard. Playfully blown up in scale, these otherwise photographic sketches have been cut out as to occupy the walls free-of-frame. These are eavesdropped upon by a smaller suite of graphite portraits on paper describing tender familial moments. It’s as if Richardson has absorbed an innate knowing of the swallow’s preening and pruning rituals in her years living as their neighbour, such is the prowess of her linework. One can almost sense the slick softness of their feathers upon skin.
Words by Kate Alida Mullen