Karen Knorr

Sibyl's Song

Sibyl’s Song (The Great Hall, Bury Saint Edmunds)1999This work is comprised of two Lolita birdcages with two live male canaries one yellow and the other white who burst into song . They stop when they detect a human presence approaching. In a sense what happens here is a competition around maleness and territorriality and seduction. The female is attracted by the male canary song. Male canaries sing through a learning process which is based on mimicryas well as singing more impressively then their male rival in order to attract the female. The canaries lived ate and slept for a month in their cages in The Great Hall where they were taken care of by the gallery staff.

The work was produced in response to Great Hall at Adams building which now houses The Bury Saint Edmund’s municipal Art gallery. Paul Hedge from Hale Gallery in Deptford invited me to produce work in response to this magnificent space which had two chandeliers hanging – symmetrically in fact two identical chandeliers which inspired my work since at one point I wished to place each cage under each chandelier. In the video record one can see the bird move in its cage reflected in the chandelier. Birds were once sold in The Great Hall which had many uses over the years including as an indoor tennis court. Sibyl’s Song is the wall text piece song by Angela Landesbury as Sibyl in the 1945 film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel: The Portait of Dorian Gray.