It is rare that the birding and art worlds come together. It is even rarer that they bring in some of the greatest artists in the world, along with musicians such as Doves, Gorillaz and Blur.
This phenomenon is called Ghosts of Gone Birds.The brief – given to 120 artists – was to produce a piece of work based loosely on one or more extinct birds, with proceeds from sales going to BirdLife International. The results exceeded the curator's wildest dreams – the exhibition in London was a sensation, with the people involved representing a who's who of British art – Sir Peter Blake, Ben Newman, Ralph Steadman, Billy Childlish – along with renowned bird artists such as Bruce Pearson and Carry Akroyd.
Bloomsbury is delighted to be publishing this book about the event. Featuring art from the event along with text by the artists themselves, it is glossy, colourful and rich – a fitting testament to the exhibition and to the birds whose demise inspired it.
"This near-A4 sized paperback chronicles four art exhibitions mounted in Liverpool, London, Brighton and Swansea in 2011-13. [...] The book gives an excellent impression of the exhibitions for someone who did not visit them. The quality of the reproduction of the artwork is excellent. One criticism is the limited usefulness of the Contents page due to the lack of page numbers in the book, and the consequent impossibility of finding the species and artists listed in the two appendices without thumbing through the whole publication."
- Dorian Moss, BTO book reviews