Footnotes

Provenance
With Osborne Samuel, London, where acquired by
Private Collection, U.K.
Their sale; Bonhams, London, 18 November 2015, lot 56, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Waddington Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 11 October-4 November 1972 (another cast)
Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Elisabeth Frink: Open Air Retrospective, 21 July-14 November 1983 (another cast)
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, 8 February-24 March 1985 (another cast)
Hong Kong, The Rotunda, Exchange Square, part of Hong Kong Festival, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture & Drawings, 31 January-31 March 1989 (another cast)
Washington, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1950-1990, 1990 (another cast)
London, Beaux Arts, Frink: Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1998 (another cast)
London, Beaux Arts, Frink, 2006 (another cast)
London and Bath, Beaux Arts, Frink, 2009 (another cast)

Literature
Edwin Mullins, The Art of Elisabeth Frink, Lund Humphries, London, 1972, cat.no.91 (ill.b&w., another cast)
Jill Wilder, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture Catalogue Raisonné, Harpvale, Salisbury, 1984, p.171, cat.no.162 (ill.b&w., another cast)
Annette Ratuszniak, Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, London, 2013, p.108, cat.no.FRC187 (ill.b&w., another cast)

Like her contemporaries whose work of the period was generalised under the term 'Geometry of Fear', Frink in the late '50s and '60s engaged with the heavy sense of dread that came from living in a newly nuclear-enabled world. She called upon the symbolism of birds as harbingers of this potential catastrophic violence. They appeared as blinded, sharp-beaked aggressors, distorted and stalking which took on an archaic form and crowed towards unknown horrors. This brutal aesthetic dominated her output until 1967 when she moved to the south of France. The light brighter and the air warmer, her entire output shifted accordingly. The Mirage works were the first bird pieces produced there and although they retain many similar qualities to their predecessors, they are decidedly more evolved. Inspired by local flamingos, which when viewed from afar in intense heat, became distorted by mirage to become even more slender, the sculptures' surface becomes smoother and more finessed and the form sleeker and more stylised.