Birdland (with Mark Perrott) 2003

Here is the text for your audio guide: Robert Qualters made this collaborative piece, Birdland, with Mark Perrott. Looking at it, I imagine the artists taking turns, adding their squares to the grid. It’s like a game of exquisite corpse, but with images. The colours really sing: bright blues, oranges, reds, and yellows. The squares lock together in a patchwork of realism and abstraction. I see figurative elements—a bird, an eye—alongside pure painted textures and patterns. I sympathize with the challenge they set themselves: to create harmony out of disparate parts. Each little gesture, each dab of paint, becomes a building block. It reminds me of how much trust is involved when collaborating; it is really amazing how they took a chance. And I wonder if they knew how the final image would look? What a celebration of colour, mark-making, and the joy of making. You could say each artist is singing in their own birdland. I bet they inspired each other to make something new!