Wiradjuri artist Jonathan Jones is working on a project for this year’s Asia Pacific Triennial which requires a lot of feathers “ native bird feathers. It’s all about understanding the wind as an important part of understanding Country. Winds bring change, knowledge and ideas. Connected to the winds are budyaan, or the birds, who know the winds best.
Jones is working on the project called Wiradjuri dhawura gulbanha”Wiradjuri wind philosophy”with elder Uncle Stan Grant AM. And it will become an installation of objects made from the feathers bound with string on to traditional tools, making flocks across the gallery wall, plus an accompanying soundscape. It’s been commissioned by the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art from 23rd November, 2018.
Jones previously made the huge Kaldor Project in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden called barrangal dyara (skin and bones), involving hundreds of Aboriginal shields stretching across 20,000 square-metres and recapitulating the shape of the Garden Palace that burnt down, taking a huge collection of Indigenous artefacts with it.
You can help by gathering as many native feathers as you can find, small and big. He’s looking for complete (undamaged) and clean feathers. Everything from seagulls to magpies, wood ducks to cockatoos. Even your pet budgie!
Feathers can be posted (along with your name so he can acknowledge your help!) to:
Jonathan Jones
PO Box 65
Bondi NSW 2026
Please pack your feathers carefully, preferably in a sturdy box or envelope with a cardboard backing and mark ‘fragile: do not bend’.
