Abstract

In 2008, I was commissioned to make a Billboard for the side of the Waygood studios in Byker, Newcastle. For this piece, I drew on the local, Northumbrian words for birds I had seen on walks in the Coquet Valley in Northumberland. Of course, Newcastle was once a part of the old kingdom of Northumbria, when the birds named here would, more than likely, have been seen on or around the Ouseburn that runs through Byker.

A study of bird names presents an ‘unpredictable and haphazard richness’ with names drawn from ‘the very roots of our language’ British Birds: Their Folklore, Names and Literature by Francesca Greenoak. The name Coquet comes from the Old English cocc, meaning ‘wild bird’.

W I T T O L Wheatear
C H I T T Y Meadow Pipit
Q U E E S T Woodpigeon
C A L L O O Curlew
K E E L I E Kestrel
W I Z Z L E Dipper

To concide with the showing of the billboard, I presented a small and
related group of work in the gallery in Waygood called the Hanging Wall