2023
Finding a dead bird is an everyday poignancy. Picture windows, filthy feeders, rapacious cats, habitat destruction, pesticides, and herbicides keep a city-dweller in constant supply. The beauty of the bird is frequently undimmed. Its decay, fostered by maggots and other cleaners, eventually reveals its miraculous skeleton. Like any other still life, work with this subject takes place primarily in my studio.
Falcon’s Guide (2023) accompanies and extends a body of work in development since 2019. The exhibition prints are large and immersive. A boxed set, Even as the Falcon Plummets (2022), is a space of meditation and possession – narrative and classification controlled by the user. This book offers a hybrid experience: details nearing the scale and hallucinatory effect of the large prints, but closer to the body, as something meant to be held and cared for. The selection and sequence align with the list at the front of the book: science, art, ruin, regret.
Donigan Cumming 2023
Falcon’s Guide
Limited edition artist’s book
Signed by the artist
Montréal, 2023
54 pages, colour and b&w illus., 306 x 306 mm
English text
