Homing Canary?

Turns out it’s not just pigeons that can make their way home after long absences. The slightly dishevelled canary in Taranaki artist Dale Copeland’s assemblage Singer has returned to Puke Ariki nearly ten years after it was deaccessioned from the collection and gifted to her. As the old Taranaki Museum prepared to morph into Puke Ariki, its heritage collections were moved during the building work. It was decided that a solitary canary, which had no particular significance to either Taranaki or New Zealand, was no longer suitable for the collection and was offered to Copeland. So, armed with her new specimen and her penchant for a clever pun, she incorporated the songbird into her Singer assemblage. After years of sitting on top of the TV, the artwork was recently chosen by Puke Ariki for the Heritage Collection, thus returning the bird to the museum once more.

Copeland’s assemblage brings together the canary, an artificial lemon tree, a wooden Singer sewing machine cover and part of a musical score set to Janet Frame’s poem “Some Thoughts on Bereavement”. The sheet music features words from a single stanza that ruminates on the nature of death: "In loss the trees bear stings, and flowers / carry pain as if it were honey. / The sun is cruel. The daylight does not / understand or why does it not bring / back the dead?" Singer demonstrates Copeland’s keen eye for the connection between seemingly unrelated things – a stuffed bird famous for its singing voice, a musical score about death and a sewing machine cover branded with a melodious name.