In the Background

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That's the point. Birds are everywhere. This prevalence ensures that images of our airborne friends are easy for an audience to connect to, making them as commonplace in artwork as they are in everyday life. When you walk up past the stencilled pigeon, you discover even more birds in the next blocked brick window on your left. Let's experiment: take a good look at the scene in front of you. Now take a second look, but visualise the scene without the birds in it. It becomes a very different picture, doesn't it? The stencilled birds, whilst beautiful in their own right, contribute to the overall image with a sense of vitality, movement and direction. Without them, the scene is a lot more industrial and static. The placement of the birds – in the background and between pieces – mimics their real-life behaviour and the way in which they form a backdrop for events in our every day lives. As such, the birds in this scene compliment the other pieces by making them relevant, forming a bridge of familiarity between the audience and the artwork, giving the viewer the chance to establish a more personal connection to the adjacent works.