Bomb-making terrorists have made it hard to buy taxidermy supplies, but that hasn't stopped 57-year old Sydney artist
Emily Valentine Bullock from making her comedically macarbe jewels, sculptures and wearable art.
Bullock takes dead birds found on the roadside, carefully plucks them and applies their feathers to plastic lizards, bra forms, bustiers and animal figures. The end result is incongruous flightless wonders like the pugcocks, boxers and brooches above.
"I trained as a jeweller and I used to make loads of feathery and beaded jewellery back in the nineties, but then the whole minimalist thing came in and stores stopped buying decorative pieces. So I turned my hand to sculpture and made my first piece, the lorikeet thongs, in 2001," she says.
Bullock sold one bird bra which fetched well over a grand, and is always working on more pieces in her Surrey Hills studio where she has been based for 17 years. Her smallest works - the flying lizard brooches with beaded necks - are just $55.
Yes, there's a bit of a hygiene issue working with dead animals. The birds are frozen, then plucked or prepared by a professional taxidermist.
Dead birds on the side of the road are also not that plentiful, so Bullock has Myna birds caught for her, since they are a listed noxious pest much like rabbits or foxes. They feature in the bird bra at the top and bottom.
Bullock sells most of her work through galleries in Auckland where the shopping culture and style suits her work. She won a
Wearable Art Award at
WOW in 2003 for the budgeribra and her Mynah Messiah show earlier this year at
The Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney featured the Egyptian barbies pictured above.
See Emily's work in two shows coming up in Newcastle in July and Canberra in February.