By Casey Neill
A Mount Evelyn artist hopes her latest exhibition will start conversations about death.
Bronwyn Ward’s first solo show Murmuration is on display in Mooroolbark and features very detailed drawings and paintings of large flocks of starlings, called murmurations.
“It came from two long-spanning passions,” she said.
“Birds have been a subject in my work for a long time.”
She lived in the UK for 13 years and spent lots of time watching the starlings.
She spent eight of those years working in a hospice, supporting people nearing the end of their lives and their loved ones as a complimentary therapist.
When Ms Ward moved back to Australia she got involved with the Reflected Legacy program in Sydney.
“This was a legacy painting project, so sitting with a patient on the palliative ward and their family and asking them stories about their family and their life, making an audio recording plus painting a picture in real time that captures their life,” she said.
“It was about changing the feel in the hospital room as well.
“It was about breaking vigil and just a new way to facilitate conversations.”
Ms Ward said our society was becoming good at talking about birth.
“Death is just birth in reverse,” she said.
“It’s the same miracle and it needs the same support around it but we’re just not very good at it.”
She said other cultures were great at handling death, but the western process was medicalised.
“We’ve lost that connection and that ownership over what you do with someone when they die,” she said.
Ms Ward explained that when starlings murmurated there was no leader – the process happened organically.
“They flock together to make themselves appear stronger to a predator,” she said.
“Each bird follows the next.
“It’s such a stunning thing to see.”
She said the community naturally followed the next wing, and likened this to people being able to talk about loss.
“A friend of mine lost her husband and felt bad that her children’s friends were having to learn about death,” she said.
“This is not how it should be.
“There’s got to be a better way.
“I think so much around death has been clinicalised and medicalised and taken away that all the humanity has been removed from it – and the love.
“There’s so much fear that people feel around death.”
Ms Ward said people also felt pressure to put a time limit on their grief.
“You’re never over grief,” she said.
“It’s inside you, it’s with you forever.
“As a society it’s so important for us to regain those things we used to have – when someone is losing someone or has lost someone, that we know how to support them, that we don’t isolate them because we don’t know.”
Ms Ward hopes visitors to her exhibition see the work for what it is.
“It’s beautiful to look at,” she said.
“That’s a big part of it.
“A body of work about death doesn’t have to be really dark ad scary and awful.
“But I would be really pleased if someone looked at my work and read about it and maybe had a conversation with someone about that.
Murmuration is on display in the Red Earth Gallery at Mooroolbark Community Centre until Saturday 22 September. Entry is free.
