Birds

BIRDS
Ciara Healey

Description: This is a hardback book with a yellow card civer and a pink metallic embossing. The inside pages are printed on gloss paper. The book is 195 x 26.5cm with 37 pages. Birds by Ciara Healey is the second part in a series of 'nature library' books that explore the theme of belonging and identity throught the languge of NAtural History. Following on from 'Butterflies by Ciara Healey' the Bird imagery reflects upon the interconnections between that which has changed and that wghich remains. The book juxtaposes found images from 19th century museum displays with images of knitted bird coats in bell jars and cabinets of curiosities filled with everyday found objects. Placing these images together subverts the traditional forms of classification that continue to influence how history and identity is percieved. There are three groups of birds identified in this book; native, migrant and hybrid. The hybrid bird species occupies an in-between space, a displaced space. Floating between the records of moments passed, the birds become caught between two worlds, between the familiar and strange, between belonging and disappearance. Their paradoxical presence and absence occupies an in-between space, momentarily they are, as the poet Bernard O'Donoghue puts it, 'neither here nor there, and therefore, home."
Publication information: 2007, Dublin, Ireland, Stitched, Litho Prints, Edition 1 of 500
www.ciarahealey.com
www.ignition.ie