BLAKE LAWRENCE

Psittacines

Psittacines is the culmination of a body of research considering speculative relationships between drag queens and birds. The works in psittacines were made in material entanglement with three urban parrot species of Sydney -- including Little Corella (Cacatua sanguinea), Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus) and Musk Lorikeet (Glossopsitta concinna). Contributions from their parties’ fold into scanned and layered compositions beside synthetic and human hair wigs and Swarovski crystals. A tea brewed from this organic matter tones crude cyanotype shrouds and garments. The gestures of lip-sync are offered as an action of mourning - for and beside birds in the vortices of extinction we call the Anthropocene.

Psittacines was made on the city streets of stolen Gadigal land. Each of the species engaged have their own name(s) in local language, and occupy their own sites within situated Gadigal human/non-human cosmologies – as well as those of innumerable surrounding geographies – physical, spiritual and ancestral.