Laurie Nilsen: Birds on a wire - Australian Art Collector

canvases executed in pastel, bold strokes rendered with clear affection. But
the are not passive zoological portraits. Given their scale, <strong>Nilsen</strong> has
managed to project his political agenda onto the glossy brightness of the
bird’s eye.
“They’re working,” he says. “I can only take them so far before they
become like Andy Warhol repetitions, but I’ve treated them so far like
family portraits so they’re more personal. Where I’ve been sourcing my
material is an emu farm and there is one particular individual called Dolly
and she loves being handled, but as soon as I put my arm around her the
mother emu comes up to check out what’s going on and I’m waiting on a
big kick from one of the males. So I’m getting a bit close to Dolly, she’s just
magic. But every one of them is different, they all have different hairstyles,
different personalities.
“They’re our totem so that’s why I respond to them that way I suppose
and to see them getting killed off the way they do … You’re pretty helpless
to do anything about it. You grow up in the bush and you get pretty
complacent about killing things because often it’s the only way to eat, but I
think as you get older you get a bit softer.” ■
The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territroy in Darwin is staging
The 24th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Award exhibition until
18 November, 2007.
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First published in Australian Art Collector,
Issue 42 October-December 2009
<strong>Laurie</strong> <strong>Nilsen</strong>, Little Johnny, 2001. Acrylic automotive paint,
aluminium, barbed wire & stainless steel, 66 x 32cm.
Opposite: <strong>Laurie</strong> <strong>Nilsen</strong>, I'm a Widow by Choice, 2007. Barbed wire
+ powdercoated steel, 140 x 160 x 50cm.
COURTESY: FIRE-WORKS GALLERY, BRISBANE.
www.artcollector.net.au
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