Site Fidelity: Rock Pigeons and Refugees

Authors

  • Lucy Bleach University if Tasmania, Tasmanian College of the Arts

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.60162/swamphen.4.10618

Keywords:

cultural ecology, urban studies, animal studies

Abstract

This paper presents a series of multi-disciplinary artworks developed from collaborations with local Tasmanian pigeon fanciers and homing associations. The artworks explore the desire to locate habitat in unstable environments, exposing bespoke ecosystems and visualising agency within a locational / relational feedback loop. The homing instinct of the rock pigeon is segued into the loss of home felt by local refugees. 

The wild rock pigeons' cohabitation with humans 10 000 years ago triggered a unique and mutually beneficial association, allowing safe shelter for bird and unprecedented carrier utility for human. The enduring relationship between bird and human has evolved in response to the pigeon's homing instinct, evidencing an empathetic bond driven by an urge to continually re-establish contact.

Homing is an innate instinct to return to known territory via new and unknown environments. The contemporary bird / fancier relationship reveals layers of belonging, between animal, human and place. It more abstractly reflects a desire to be local; to belong within an emotional and spatial system, confronting and navigating tenuous places and experiences.

Pigeon fanciers typically inhabit suburban environments, establishing the birds' lofts amongst the conglomerate nest of human habitation (sheds, carports, BBQ areas, clotheslines). From this domestic grotto, fanciers travel impressive distances to reach wilder places, releasing their birds to find their way back home. The bird's instinct of site fidelity sits counter to the fancier's instinct to reconnect to wild environs. It is a symbiotic relationship drawn from divergent urges.

 

Author Biography

Lucy Bleach, University if Tasmania, Tasmanian College of the Arts

Lucy Bleach's practice focuses on humans' varied relationships to contingent and volatile environments / situations, and seeks engagement with communities that experience this relationship in close proximity. Her current research focuses on active volcanic environments and their communities; the orchestration of ruin as a homeopathic catalyst for transformation; and residual artefact as an intimate / contraband souvenir.

Exhibition highlights include Oral Fibre for the 4th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan (2009); Homing for the temporary public art event Iteration:Again, Tasmania (2011); the solo commissioned works Volcano Lover,  for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (2011), and Local Colour for the Devonport Regional Gallery (2011).

Lucy has participated in five Ten Days on the Island festivals. She was an Asialink Visual Arts Resident in Japan (2009); a recipient of the Qantas Contemporary Art Award (2010), and has received New Work, Skills Development and Professional Practice grants from the Australia Council and Arts Tasmania. 

Lucy is a Lecturer in Fine Art at the Tasmanian College the of Arts, UTAS.

Pigeon skulls drawn by Darwin

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Published

2014-11-12

Issue

Vol. 4 (2014): Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (AJE)

Section

Essays

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