Exhibition Opening event: Thursday 1 July, 6pm-8pm

Some strange birds have come into the suburbs. Some have found their way into the attic spaces of the MAC building…

Nigel Farley was attracted to the MAC toilets space for the simple reason that it represented a kind of cul-de-sac away from the everyday busyness of the arts centre, a space where notions of nature “coming into the space”, due to our frequent absence, might even play out. In this context, it is well known that with reduced human presence comes differences in how birds, bats and other animals communicate and exploit new opportunities created in our absence.

This work draws a parallel to 2020’s Covid 19 lockdowns, brief periods which saw a reduction in road, air traffic and industry allowing nature to reclaim for a time the cities’ street spaces and airspace—the space here representing a scaled down version of the complex entanglement between ourselves and ecologies where overlap occurs. In the same way it explores links to the ‘depressing’, paradoxical, ‘weird, uncanny, and—strangely—sweet awareness of the world’ within which the notion of ‘dark ecology’ finds meaning (Morton, 2016).

Nigel Farley acknowledges the traditional owners being the Dhudhuroa of the Kiewa Valley and Yaitmathang of the Bogong High Plains —both regions in N.E. Victoria where recordings were made (March 2021). With thanks to Bogong Centre for Sound Culture and Sara Maher.