Venue: Slessor Gardens // Date: May 11 – July 6th2018
A new public art exhibition utilising 36 billboard images showing photographs of eggs belonging to birds local to Dundee. The exhibition draws attention to the beauty and the fragility of the natural world and the care it takes to sustain both human and non-human life on this planet and is being hosted by the Slessor Garden’s based Sharing Not Hoarding.
The artists based in Scotland, Dalziel + Scullion, explain the eggs’ design and engineering are dazzling, but so is the potent knowledge that such eggs contain the ingredients to conjure flight. This can only happen of course in an environment that allows the careful attention of prospective parents to nurture the fledgelings into existence and to join the collective community of birds. As such the egg is both a universal symbol of immense potential, but also of fragile vulnerability.
The eggs depicted in the exhibition are from the archives of the Natural History Unit at Perth Museum.
Taking eggs from live nests was rightly made illegal in 1954, but not until custodial sentences were imposed in 2001 did the practice significantly decrease. As a result, many of the eggs photographed here are significantly old, some taken before the First World War, others during it.
The artists discuss their objective with the exhibition: “We hope the work will communicate on several different levels. The eggs themselves are very beautiful and full of wonder purely as objects and images, but they are also very old and fragile, they speak about the history and evolution of birds and their fragility to survive as a species.”
You can see the exhibition on Slessor Gardens until July 6th!
