An exhibition in Redcar has spent the summer taking one of the town’s most familiar visitors rather seriously: the starling.
Common Stars: Art and the Starling runs at Redcar Palace until 5 September. Instead of simply collecting pictures of birds, the exhibition uses the ways starlings behave as a set of prompts for artists.
Mimicry, murmuration, scavenging, complex systems and iridescence all become creative starting points. It is an unusual bit of curating, but one grounded directly in the building. Redcar Palace says starlings regularly perch on the roof above its courtyard, using the architecture to amplify their calls.
The exhibition grew from a question about what it might mean for a community arts venue to treat those birds as another community around the building. Invited artists sit alongside an open-call element, which the Palace describes as its own version of a murmuration: many individual responses forming something larger together.
There is history folded into it too. The accompanying material reaches from composer Olivier Messiaen’s transcription of birdsong to Mozart’s famous pet starling, while the wider project looks at the relationship between people and starlings over time.
There is also a note beneath the playfulness. The Palace points to the decline of a bird that can feel so ordinary precisely because people are used to seeing it. The exhibition asks visitors to look again at something easy to pass without noticing.
Common Stars is in its final week. Details are available from Redcar Palace, whose current programme page also confirms the exhibition runs until 5 September.