Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland

Exhibited: Ray Ching The Last Tree Fell Artis Gallery, Auckland, November 22 - December 18 2005

Illustrated: Plate 27, The Last Tree Fell, Artis Gallery, Auckland, 2005

The power of flight could be had in other ways too, and the lives of immortals on Mount Olympus are an endless metamorphoses of Greek gods and men into birds. Jupiter takes the form of a swan to make love to Leda and Cychus has his body changed into a swan to fly forever among the stars. In the painting, Calling the Names of Birds, Ching shows the figure of a T-shirted woman, already become half hornbill. It is the possibility of painted visual extravagances here that appeals to Ching, who appears as interested in persuading us of the reality of what nearly is, as to inform us of what it actually was. Text: Affixed verso