- This work involves the
teeth of six individuals,
and there are seven teeth here.
So, two teeth from one individual.
All of the individuals,
all of the victims,
all of the teeth were
found on Beacon Island.
When I first met Al Patterson,
he told me an amazing
story about how in 2015,
after some days of
searching for the victims,
and not being able to find the victims,
despite having state of the art equipment,
which could actually look under
the earth to try to find the remains,
that they were getting quite fed up
with the whole exercise
until a human tooth was
found on the surface.
On the surface of the earth.
So, when Al found that human tooth,
he said "We're going to dig here!"
And not long afterwards,
they found the remains of two individuals.
So, when he told me that story,
I said to him "It's kind
of funny, really, to me."
because I asked him, "How did you,
"how did the tooth come
to be on the surface?"
and he said "Well, it was
brought to the surface
"most likely by the activity of birds."
and I said, "Well, it's like
you're being assisted here
"by the birds, it's like
the archeology of birds."
And so, this particular work,
we've called it The Archeology of Birds,
and it's actually a collaboration
between Al Patterson,
Dan Franklyn and myself.
What I really like about it,
is that it actually came
about through conversations.
And it came about through eaves dropping
as well, as I was drawing
the skeletons in the labs.
I would often hear an
expert come into the room
and tell something, a new
story about the remains.
So, a dentist would come in
and start talking about how
one tooth grinding against another
probably means that this individual
had a very hard life.
That they weren't eating the best foods.
Whereas, another individual perhaps
could be seen to have a higher station,
just by looking at the teeth.
So, Dan Franklyn explain to me
that one of the things that has
to happen with the teeth
is that they have to be,
they have to have them made into molds,
because the tooth, in order to find out
more about the specimen,
the tooth is often lost.
It has to be ground down to try
to find out more about the DNA.
So, in casting the teeth
one of the ideas I had was,
what about using lost wax process
to create new versions of these teeth,
and for some reason, in
a conversation with Al,
I was thinking, it has to be black glass.
So, these are black, these are all cast
in with black glass.
And each of them has been paired
with a piece of coral from Beacon Island.
So, for me, they start
to become personages.
They start to become
representative of the people,
and I get a sense of the
individual in another way.
So, for me, this is
another form of knowledge.
Another form of knowledge
which has come about
through conversations,
hearsay, overhearing,
as well as science and art.
