Peacock pug, sulphur-crested cockatoo retriever and lorikeet German shepherd. These are the sculptures you'll find in artist and jeweller Emily valentine's Sydney studio. Emily uses feathers from roadkill in her artworks and hopes it'll get people thinking about the birds' life and the impact roads have on wildlife.
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00:00Death, you know, in society is treated very differently from other, other issues.
00:11And I realised I didn't put my hat on.
00:16I don't know.
00:17What does it look like?
00:18Is it?
00:19Yeah.
00:20That's good.
00:21I always call it feather work and people go, what, eh?
00:29I trained at Sydney College of the Arts and I majored in jewellery.
00:34And from that I was recruited into the fashion industry and did fashion jewellery where feathers
00:42were a very important ingredient at the time.
00:46And then when I set up on my own as an artist, I used a lot of beads and then feathers.
00:54I was using commercial feathers.
00:56And then one day while driving along Kingston Street in Camperdown, we saw a dead lorikeet
01:05on the road and my friend, you know, stopped the car and made me pick it up and I haven't
01:11looked back.
01:13I mean, using roadkill is just kind of a way of saying that we should be utilising things.
01:22We shouldn't be just sort of buying new all the time.
01:27Well, the first thing I want them to do is love it and they love it and think, I mean,
01:35this is the jeweller in me, you know, wanting and being beautiful.
01:41I think that's very important to me.
01:43I mean, I work hard on making them looking friendly and beautiful, but I want them to
01:50think about the bird's previous life.
01:53I start with a ceramic slash plastic piece and glue feathers to them.
02:01The feathers I try and imitate the bird's, you know, the bloomage of the bird.
02:07So I put the wings on a little dog or cat, then build a form using the feathers to mimic
02:17how the feathers appear on a bird or a living bird so that they then, like a griffin, are
02:25kind of half animal, half bird.
02:31Because I'm using roadkill or found feathers, they have an appeal and they talk about how
02:38we value pets, how we value wild birds, and how they really don't, they're two different
02:46things, yet, you know, we treat pets with such care and love, and yet wild animals with
02:56disrespect and discourtesy.
03:02Our right to use the road is never challenged.
03:05Our right to build roads is never challenged.
03:09And, you know, really, it should be.
03:13We shouldn't have the right to put lines all over the map.
03:18And roadkill, I try and make something beautiful out of something which is bad.