Richard Frater. What remains of a naturalist

About

The search for partners and courtship among the birds of prey begins with winter, and a new breeding season awaits in spring. For this time, Richard Frater is designing a site-specific structure in the ruins that is suitable for local birds of prey that he had observed at the site in the spring and summer.
Accompanying this, the artist presents a comparative video study in which he considers the shrinking and expanding ranges of endangered species - whether in increasingly remote and hostile environments or in urban expansion - two troubling aspects of the same reality in the context of conservation. The temporal differences relate to Frater's own experiences observing and protecting birds. On one level of time, birds of prey inhabit the cliff-like high-rise buildings that surround the monastery ruin complex. On the other time plane, it is summer in Aotearoa. Traps are monitored along trails in the Ruahine Ranges of Aoteroa, New Zealand, still documenting whio (blue scaup), a threatened and endemic species found in fast-flowing rivers.

During the exhibition period, Frater's study will be supplemented by another video presentation. In this video, Frater documents his own biological father's reflections on their trans identity and gender journey. Here too, the artist deals with prevailing ideas about biological predetermination and the influence of culture and environmental factors, in this case conveying these questions through an anthropological mediation.