“For seventeen years now, my work has been mainly concerned with HIV/AIDS in an African context, and BIRD is only one of three bodies of work in that time not referencing that humanitarian problem. Africa alters one’s perception of a Western European art which has long lost itself in a visual pedantry by stripping joy in creativity out of the art making process. BIRD contains African elements of joy, abstracted colour and form derived from my home village on the Moray Firth, my pet seagull at age eight, birds in my studio garden, and a vulture I met in Botswana.” – Alex Flett