Kate Hamilton

Happy as a Dead Bird

27th March - 8th May 2009

“I‘m as happy as a dead bird,” my grandmother used to say.

It is hard to find your soul.  It is hard to find your soul mate.  It is hard to stand once your soul mate leaves.  It is hard to see the wood from the trees, or the birds in the trees mid-summer.  The sound of typing drowns their song.

A starling: fallen from the loft, presented as a gift, not to be eaten or stuffed but photographed, appears again as a powerful dream.  A duck, dead, found lying by a pond in the English countryside: crestfallen Ophelia and her child follow.  A chair put out on the street; a skirt forming a garden landscape or funeral curtain.  And white flags.

A man in Gaza, killed while feeding his birds in his top floor apartment.  His friends saved by the white flag they wrapped around themselves.

Inexplicable events. Collapsible time.

Happy as a dead bird in the park.

Working with found objects Kate‘s photographs play upon known structures and the viewers’ expectations.  Her use of birds and the human form to inhabit familiar landscapes open the pictures to new and surprising narratives.  It is through these narratives that she explores the unconscious by weaving fragments of images into a disconnected whole.  The juxtaposition of ‘the familiar‘ and ‘the strange‘ give a sense of controlled disorientation and of an intended structure reminiscent of dreams.