Alison Wilding is participating in POV on Paper, an online exhibition organised by Randan Stables Gallery in association with Hay Festival. This group show will run on the Randan Stables Gallery website throughout the month of May in place of the sculpture and painting exhibition point of view 2020 planned in conjunction with the Hay Festival 2020.
Wilding selected her 2005 Starlings prints for this online show, and we are pleased to share her writing on what inspired them here:
During January and February at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, starlings gather at dusk before roosting. From 4.30 pm for a period of approximately 40 minutes, small groups of birds flew in from all directions converging into an ever expanding swathe. Against a cloudy and darkening sky the starlings massed together flying above us like a continuous hail of arrows. At one point a sparrowhawk was amongst them and the bird cloud split in two – one half peeling off to the left, the other to the right; miraculously no two birds ever appeared to touch – a million separate dynamic marks in the sky. The bird formation described a drum, stretched into an elastic strip, then the funnel of a tornado, becoming invisible as they turned sharply in the air. It was an unpredictable display of shape-shifting geometry. As the starlings circled, flying lower and lower preparing to roost, the noise from the beating of their wings was thrilling – a huge engine flying over-head. The starlings came down suddenly, almost invisibly, as one body. The sky was empty. I had watched a drawing masterclass.
Alison Wilding, February 2005
Click here to visit POV on Paper
1–31 May
Randan Stables Gallery
