Mediated relations between humans and nature are the subject of Tully Arnot’s practice. It’s unusual to hear sounds of the natural world in the art museum, which controls humidity, temperature, dust and insects to keep works safe from environmental changes and the effects of time. In Arnot’s Bird Song 2024, visitors hear what sound like wayward birds that have made their way inside the gallery. On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent the tunes are coming from ceramic water whistles in the shape of birds, perched on eucalyptus branches protruding from the space’s architecture. The birdsongs are in fact lines of code translated into sound by electronics and air pumps. The work presents an uncanny combination of mass-produced objects in an artificial setting resembling the natural world.

The artificial ornithological sounds in Bird Song make a dystopian allusion. The work forewarns of an age of mass extinction when we can only access wildlife in the museum context. Across Australia, populations of threatened and near-threatened bird species have declined by an average of 60 per cent over the past 40 years, with some of the largest declines in the state of Queensland. While such statistics are a sobering reminder of the environmental devastation humans are causing, Arnot hopes that the dispiriting notion of needing to artificially replicate nature might conjure greater support for conservation efforts.