‘Excerpt from...’ is an installation using found objects that are source material for a series of work called Bowerbirds & Othe rAnimals. Bowerbirds & Other Animas is a collection of paintings and drawings exploring the search for a sense of place, of trying to find home in unfamiliar surroundings. Irish artist Maria Hildrick's work has looked to question how we place value on the objects we surround ourselves with and how these objects can give you a sense of home.
Toys, statues, trinkets and photos have no intrinsic emotions but are charged with an array of meanings, feelings and memories for those that owned them. Maria grew up mostly around Dublin and London, frequently moving from one place to another with her family. The compositions ‘Dublin 1988’ and ‘London 1986’ are from photograps of real places and times in the artists history. When the objects that surround you are consistent, but not the places, this instils them with great importance. The mountin of stuffed animals, the cardboard box house with the garden of dried flowers and small toys both exist alongside objects found on the side of the street here in Australia. Small porcelin statues, a cat and a koala that were all found wrapped carefully in paper in a box during the verge side collection. Someting discarded with such care must of ment someting to someone once.