Commissioned in 1997 for the Koru Club Lounge at Auckland International Airport, The Birds is part of Greer Twiss’ ongoing exploration of aspects of conservation and museum practice. In its original setting, this work occupied an indoor site, but these weather-resistant copperplated birds could equally well be placed in a patio or courtyard setting, arranged either in a group or dispersed as stand-alone pieces. The work offers such flexibility in its composition because the individual bird poles are not joined together but are independent of each other; each bird pole is free-standing.
The Birds holds a significant place in the history of Greer Twiss’ sculpture. The work develops out of one of the sculptor’s largest pieces, Edible History, an installation designed for the Elam Sculpture Show in 1993. Edible History critiqued the museum presentation of native birds: the Victorian practice of displaying stuffed, taxidermied birds on top of spun metal poles, tagged and labelled with the Maori, Latin and common names of the birds. Twiss’ birds, made out of metal, infiltrated the display space as decoys, rather in the manner of his Decoys and Illusions installation.
In both installations, Edible History and Decoys and Illusions, other decoys were interspersed among the birds. In Edible History, a bowler hat was placed on top of a pole: a bowler hat with a speaker inside it. Representative of the European intruder, this acoustic work was the voice of appreciation, presenting a recitation from Cook’s journals, praising the beauty of New Zealand native birds, the sound of their song and, most particularly, their fine flavour in a fricassee. In this, Captain Cook prefigures Walter Buller killing New Zealand native birds in order to preserve them in a museum display. Twiss critiques them both.
In the continuum of Twiss’ work, The Birds leads to the sculptor’s Graftings in The Fernery at the Auckland Domain. In this work, birds are set on poles as if they were grafted onto trees and planted. It is a conservation allusion (and illusion) which has a specific parallel in Greer Twiss’ most recent outing in the public arena, his large-scale Flight Trainer for Albatross, erected on the Auckland waterfront in 2004. To this framework for injured albatross, Twiss has tied three young birds, elevated and with wings extended, in an attempt to teach them how to fly again. The birds face out to sea, where they belong. The fourth bird, on the ladder on the ground, is learning to walk again. Along with The Birds, this work is part of the formal and thematic development that has characterised Greer Twiss’ work throughout his long and distinguished career. DR. ROBIN WOODWARD