EXHIBITION DATES: 17 October – 13 December, 2025

OFFICIAL OPENING: Friday 17 October 2025, 6pm

COST: Free

Details

Curious Birds bring together work by four artists known for creating quirky and whimsical bird art pieces and incorporating found objects and materials in their work. Smile and enjoy the works made by this wonderfully eccentric cohort; steam-punk ceramic artist Anna O’Neale, eclectic collector and sculptor Tom Buckland, sculptor and street artist byrd (aka Dan Maginnity) and Sydney based bricolage and assemblage artist Ian Swift, represented by Lost Bear Gallery, Katoomba. 

Birds have long been considered spirit messengers and are thought to represent aspiration and the ability to rise above the mundane. Humans can easily identify with many bird behaviours such as, seasonal migration, mimicry, preening, nesting and social flocking-together. Many artists use birds to represent humans idiocyncracies; Bret Whitely, Edward Lear, and Canberra’s Jan Brown are but a few. 

Birds are also known as environmental indicators, with canaries famously used to detect toxic gas in coal mines. Large and diverse populations of birds are a general indicator of positive environmental health. And birds live in relation to people occupying gardens, buildings, parks and piers and other constructed or modified habitats. 

About the Artists

Anna O’Neale

Anna O’Neale is a ceramics/mixed media artist based in Goulburn. She has been practicing for 30 years. She is currently a ceramics teacher at Canberra Potters Society. Her work explores the intersection of human, animal and machine, creating anthropomorphic characters that challenge the boundaries between the organic and mechanical.

Ian Swift

Ian Swift has always been a maker. As a child he’d ask Santa for saws and hammers with claws. He’d collect bicycle parts from hard rubbish to assemble into hybrid bikes for pocket money. After meandering through many manual jobs, he found his people at art school (UNE Lismore) and he is represented by Lost Bear Gallery, Katoomba and he has been accepted twelve times in Bondi Sculpture by the Sea and awarded People’s Choice 1999 and Art Gallery of NSW prize 2002. Through his career, Swift’s primary motivation has been the environment, and his many exhibitions and group shows have reflected this concern.  

Dan (Byrd) Maginnity

Byrd is a freelance graffiti muralist and sculptor based on Ngunnawal/Ngambri land in Canberra. Alongside his creative practice, he is deeply interested in the interfaces of cultural spaces, occupied by endemic multi-species communities and humans. Especially what language-use reveals in the apertures between description of the human condition, politics, and how humans occupy places. Starting out working in public spaces over 25 years ago, Byrd balances his time between commissioned and uncommissioned public space murals; and his studio/exhibition practice which includes paintings and large sculptures.  He makes commercial and experimental works for gallery exhibition; commissions for private clients; as well as competing for public government council & commercial mural tenders.  He has produced work for Hindmarsh Group, Molonglo Group, ICON Water, Mirvac Westfield, Core Developments, RedBox Design Group, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia. Byrd’s work explores themes of place, memory, politics, and pop culture, with a particular interest in how language and imagery shape our understanding of these concepts.

Tom Buckland

Tom Buckland is an artist who deals in a correspondence of worlds. By examining the present and the past, they construct portals to alternate futures yet to be explored. Working with recycled materials such as cardboard and salvaged electronics, Buckland creates playful, interactive and experimental installation, video and performance work that invites the audience to embark on a journey of discovery, transporting them to other dimensions across space and time provoking introspection about their own existence and the world they inhabit. In 2015, Buckland earned a BVA (Hons) from the ANU School of Art, supported by the prestigious John and Elizabeth Baker Honours scholarship and the Canberra Contemporary Art Space graduate award. Their work has graced galleries and collections both nationally and internationally, and in 2021, they were honored with the Sculpture by the Sea Clitheroe Foundation emerging artist mentorship. Currently, Buckland is based in Ngunawal/Canberra.