Product Details

A sculpture by Colette Bain

Dimensions: 18 x 12.5 x 4.5 cm

About

There is something eccentrically English about a stuffed bird in an old toffee tin. In Colette Bain’s Paper Taxidermy she painstakingly sculpts bird forms from papier-mâché, which she then beautifully paints before assembling within painted dioramas.

"All of my pieces are portraits in some way. I'm fascinated by the way in which we see ourselves in other animals, often using them to represent different qualities, both good and bad, and I enjoy playing around with this.

Recently I have been creating a series of birds, which borrow compositions from traditional taxidermy. Some of these sculptures have elements which refer to, or play with, the symbolic meaning ascribed to the particular bird I'm depicting. In others my preoccupation has been purely with colour and design.

I'm drawn to the uncanny, that combination of the familiar with the fantastical, and by using old tins (former repositories of biscuits, tea bags, odds-and-ends) to ‘house' the sculptures, I hope to enhance this quality in my own work.”