Rose Barrett: Dangan St Studio Work

Last year for my studio class we each got given a map and had to randomly choose a spot on that map to investigate and make artwork for that space. It was part of a public artwork studio unit which allowed us to create work that responded to a space and allowed us to experience what making public artwork would be like. My place chosen by me in my blinded state of mind (we were blindfolded and spun around to choose our sites- sort of like "pin the tail on the donkey") was Dangan St in Northbridge. The good thing with that class was that we also took them site areas into our other classes like drawing,printing, painting, sculpture, digital electronics, etc which allowed us to think about our site more in different ways that just what research alone about our sites could do. In the end after spending months on the Site i realised that their were no birds on the site at all even though on all the the other streets there were always heaps of birds. I spoke to people on the street and found out how wild cats loved to live on that street and apparently were the reason for their being no birds, also how even when some of the house owners owned birds and kept them in cages they all still died due to the wild cats attacking the cages. The space itself had little colour to it as well so i decided to play around with the idea of bring colour and the birds back into the street along with the bird cages that did little to nothing to stop the cats. I made my own bird cage out of material i found around my studio space along with making very colourful birds out of MDF. I painted the birds in bright colours- green, blue, and red- and made them look like birds from a far but when you got close you realised they were just MDF birds. I placed colourful feathers and petals in the bird cage as well as having a lace cage cover to represent putting colour back into the street and the death of the birds. I placed the birds all around the outside of the bird cage and then threw coloured glitter every were due to adding more colour to the street and the shinny object both attracting the birds and the cats to the area. My work explored the uselessness of the bird cage, the death of the birds, the colourless street, and the attraction of both the birds and cats to the site when colour is added back into the street which a few weeks later after installing the work house owners told me that birds had started to return to the area and how my glitter still surrounded the street in tiny crevasses of buildings and drains. The class allowed me to experience what installing and planning work for public instillation involves and how it is not something you can just consider lightly about when installing work to relate to a space.