Martin King
Dawn chorus in twenty six volumes | 2025 | etching, lift ground aquatint, spitbite, photopolymer intaglio, chine collé, hard cover books, ribbon | 111 x 139cm
Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2026 - Finalist
Courtesy of artist and King Street Gallery on William, Sydney; Australian Galleries, Melbourne; Photograph by Matt Stanton, Melbourne Museum Photography.
Martin King
VIC
Dawn chorus in twenty six volumes
2025
Etching, lift ground aquatint, spitbite, photopolymer intaglio, chine collé, hard cover books, ribbon
111 x 139cm
Dawn Survey in twenty-six volumes’ is work referencing the genres, still life and natural history painting. It is drawn from observation and modified by imagination.
The work is a synthesis of a number of things, human and animal, life and death, beauty and the macabre, nature and ‘nature morte’, among others.
The lyre bird is a symbol of beauty and exuberance and the tail feather skulls reference the idea of life, death and regeneration.
When these opposites, are distilled in the imaginative space, the synthesis results in ambiguity and irony, a slightly vexed expression of reality.
It is a metaphysical reality, an underlying reflection on the nature of, and vital connections that exist in the world we inhabit.
Embedded in the work are photo-etchings of the exquisite watercolours of birds from the diary of Australian pastoralist and naturalist John Cotton (1802-1849).