March 6th - April 19th, 2025 

Son of Bird Inferior 

Opening Reception: First Thursday, March 6, 5-8PM
Second Reception: First Thursday, April 3, 5-8PM
Gallery Hours: By Appointment on Saturdays, 12-3PM

Specialist presents Son of Bird Inferior, new work by Ebb Bayley.

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of (frequently white cis male) individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.

Ebb Bayley uses fabricated archeologies to retell stories of transformation through a transgender lens. Fragments of folklore are stitched together toward an upending of cautionary tales. Painting is deployed as a form of collection and recounting. The dissolving forms and static surfaces in the paintings reflect the conditions of their vision and disability.

Ebb Bayley is based between Orcas Island and Berlin. Bayley received their BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and has recently shown at Trautwein Herleth and Horse & Pony in Berlin.

Show title sourced from -MANCER by Mike Corrao.