When he flies up into the sky look directly into his eyes; he will come back to you
(drawings being produced on an ongoing basis) Every evening at 5pm this man travels to the centre of Perth city to feed pigeons. Several years ago he had serious car accident and went into a coma. He told me that for three days he was dead and for three days he had all these dreams. In these dreams there were many birds, some crows but mostly pigeons. It is since he woke up from his coma that he began feeding the birds. He told me that you should look directly into the eyes of the pigeon as they fly into the sky, because that way they will come back to you (this is where the title of the work comes from).
To produce this work I am using a 2-minute video of the man feeding pigeons, took screen shots from the video at regular intervals and drew the pigeons in the images. The drawings are installed in layers. The images of the birds are printed on tracing paper/semi-transparent paper so some conceal others. This attempts to manifest the form of a dream through the way the work is presented – layers of constructed imagery that are blurred, connected and (non-specifically/directionally) symbolic.
The drawings are at the same scale of a pigeon and they are installed in relation to each other, as they were when they surrounded the man. As such the viewer takes the place of the man and is surrounded by birds, met with the same open proposition as he was in his dream.
Image below: installation view of work presented in the exhibition Songe éternel d'un esprit endormi with C.O.S.M.I.C. collective, La FaRM, Neuilly-Plaisance Ville, France,
Photo: Magali Rifflart-Villeneuve
