Coded Ornithology is the second body of work to result from my residency at the Natural History Museum, London. It focused on the way individual specimens are labelled in the Museum’s extensive ornithology collection. A unique coding system is used by the Bird Group to quickly identify different categories of specimens; different species, subspecies, geographical locations, months of year, sex, etc. Coloured and numbered dots, known as spot numbers, are attached to individual specimen labels. There are 300 individual spots in six colours: yellow, red, blue, orange, pink and green, each colour having spots numbered 1 to 50.

There is no generic system for the use of these spots, whereby each one represents the same category throughout the collection. It is up to individual curators to choose which spots will be applied to certain specimen categories. I have always been intrigued by coding systems, particularly when seemingly ordered and rigid procedures are implemented in a personalised manner. The use of colour, especially the monochrome, is a recurring element in my work, along with repetitive, labour intensive production processes. The photographs and works on paper are as much a celebration of colour as they are a study of museology practice.

Coded Ornithology was funded by Arts Council England, (through Escalator Visual Arts, an Arts Council England, East initiative to support the region’s most promising artists), the Leverhulme Trust, the Natural History Museum and Arts Development East Cambridgeshire.