The Augurs
2018
Large format black and white photographs
150cm x 120cm each

These large format photographic works examine the iconographic and symbolic significance of birds alluding to the transcendent or mystical associations conjured up by these animals. The title references the practice in ancient Rome of reading the flight of birds for prophetic reasons and interpreting these signs as good or bad omens.

Making particular reference to J.A. Baker’s canon of nature writing The Peregrine, the works reject familiar representations of nature and resist associations with the sublime or the pictorial. Here the birds resist meeting our gaze and are presented as distant, unknowable and fundamentally alien.