Rotations, stills from HD video
The video work Rotations is a looped vertical HD projection with sound. The work draws from the iconography of the bird of prey and its historical transition from a symbol of state power to its subsequent assimilation into commercial branding strategies, fully prompting the audience to consider exactly how the two are connected.
Rotations focuses on the movements of trained falcons as once powerful historical symbols – perhaps the first ‘luxury toys’ of ancient European nobles – and understandably animals that would come to feature, together with numerous other birds of prey, in the language of heraldry; the visual shorthand for state and powerful clans alike. Through linking the moving image to the plinth-like objects, which are in fact artist commissioned replicas of design masterpieces of the 20th century, Cibic highlights the simultaneity of the architectural accessory and the object that it displays, and the encapsulation of luxury and power that surrounds both. Cibic both teases us with the undoubted seduction of such loaded symbols before posing serious questions about how such iconography is subsequently harnessed to altogether more quotidian political or commercial agendas. And, of course, somewhere within the deluge of ideas contained in the works, there is also something of a romantic bent; a poetic elegy to the natural beauty of these birds now reduced to tourist souvenirs or the detritus of spectacle.
