Ebb Bayley

March 6th - April 19th, 2025

Son of Bird Inferior  at Specialist

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.

acrylic and silk on canvas, 115 cm x 135 cm, 2023

acrylic and silk on canvas, 150 x 50 cm, 2024

—————

from Bog Bodies

with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony

When walking on the bog, the pressure of our feet compresses the lungs of the dead, whose voices emerge in response to our presence. Carter & Bayley reconstruct a hyperstitional loop of relation where to be buried is not to be erased, but to enter a circuit of communication between the past and future.

featuring a 20-channel fixed sound installation by Scott Carver

----------------------

Early in the morning we

walk out onto the spongy dark earth.

Before the dew evaporates

it reveals their forms beneath.

The pressure of our weight on the peat

pushes the lungs of the bog

bodies into a fluted exhale.

We might also slip under

the prickling acidic softness,

A reed clenched in our teeth.

We exhale, we hum,

we dye ourselves in the pressure.

One time, although many more times too,

-because there is nothing

but stretching loops here-

We breathe, we hum. We slip further

into the brown sponge conduit.

Bouncing feet from great distance

precuss softly against us.

Before the dew evaporates early and cold.

The dew never forms on top of the bodies.

They are traced in outlines of dryness.

The dew never forms on top of the

primordial trees slumbering.


People with longs sticks come

to prod the trees. Some are removed.

We hum. We slip further.

acrylic and pastel on canvas, prints on newsprint, 280 x 200 cm, 2021

—-

Every angel bears a true thought. They are the bees of infinity, the messengers of Lady Wisdom. Their thoughts are honeyed sweet. 'Dead souls,' they whisper. Wisdom is opaque, indistinct, only discovered by an archeology of soul.

-Derek Jarman

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 2020

Lake Flexer, 150 x 125 cm, acrylic and silk on canvas, 2023

Tidal Mouth to Mouth, 150 x 125 cm, acrylic and silk on canvas, 2023

at Globe Gallery, Countdown Grabowsee

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 150 x 120 cm, 2024

Bog Bodies with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony, Berlin.

March 6th - April 19th, 2025

Son of Bird Inferior  at Specialist

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of (frequently white cis male) individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.

acrylic, ash and pastel on canvas, 90 x 70 cm, 2021

acrylic and print collage on canvas, both 70 × 40 cm, 2025

at Globe Gallery Grabowsee

acrylic on canvas, 55 x 60 cm, 2021

acrylic, ash and pastel on canvas, 65 x 75 cm, 2021

acrylic and silk on canvas, 90 cm x 170 cm, 2023

Gouache and graphite on paper with carved frame, 43 x 52 cm, 2019

acrylic and silk on canvas, 150 x 70 cm, 2024

Bag, Bug-Out supplies, mud, ribbons, dimensions variable 2025

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 150 cm x 120 cm, 2024

at Ashley Berlin, Dec 2021

Transit flare hangs in
the bog could be also
just sensibility — goliath
but clarity of naked chestnut
tree in the Hof, waving, also

Hinge that LeGuin’s kemmer also is —
what beckons through

Limbs wavering — will of light
caught dancer in panes
of swamp gas and barely
tokenized as anything but phantom

Methane crossroad spurs
us, Spur though the mineral
runoff as constituents break
down — bog light — lobbyist rum left
out for Eshu — chest as it’s seen to
by beeswax only half-synthetic

Toadstool — the dark spurs figure
from its ground — flux as the beckon
bears it, what sleep could be called —
the wide sleep

Also jackalheaded
self I’m sometimes — split
chestnuts and steaming
too meatlike in Parco Sempione —
hinge of stone hedges,
rows speaking to sleep,
teeth of one banshee’s comb — deaf knelt to
methane and refraction mud sleeps on

What’ll it be though?
What’s the weight say?

Float the eye
across plural hue and compound
chronology could be seen to —
or largely, downstream — will
a blindness — furred slug — oil slick —
ditch speech or least
speak ditch,
for now,
to sleep

Nat Marcus, 2021

acrylic on canvas, 60 x 100 cm, 2022

Bog Bodies

with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony

When walking on the bog, the pressure of our feet compresses the lungs of the dead, whose voices emerge in response to our presence. Carter & Bayley reconstruct a hyperstitional loop of relation where to be buried is not to be erased, but to enter a circuit of communication between the past and future.

Dedicated to the Martyrs of Palestine. Proceeds from the show will be donated to the Berlin Legal Fund in support of Palestinian solidarity.

With a 20-channel fixed sound installation by Scott Carver

Further documentation here

----------------------

Early in the morning we

walk out onto the spongy dark earth.

Before the dew evaporates

it reveals their forms beneath.

The pressure of our weight on the peat

pushes the lungs of the bog

bodies into a fluted exhale.

We might also slip under

the prickling acidic softness,

A reed clenched in our teeth.

We exhale, we hum,

we dye ourselves in the pressure.

One time, although many more times too,

-because there is nothing

but stretching loops here-

We breathe, we hum. We slip further

into the brown sponge conduit.

Bouncing feet from great distance

precuss softly against us.

Before the dew evaporates early and cold.

The dew never forms on top of the bodies.

They are traced in outlines of dryness.

The dew never forms on top of the

primordial trees slumbering.


People with longs sticks come

to prod the trees. Some are removed.

We hum. We slip further.

----------------------

- Ebb Bayley

acrylic and silk on canvas, grommets, string, stones, 140 x 115 cm, 2022

Bad Budz

Horse & Pony at Adjunct Positions

Last Thursday at Studio Rangsdorf

curated by Zu Kalinowska & Alice Morey

Photo credit: Rocco Ruglio-Misurell

acrylic on canvas, 110 × 90 cm, 2025

at Ashley Berlin, Dec 2021

acrylic and silk on canvas, 70 × 150 cm, 2024

acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 cm, 2018

acrylic on canvas, 40 x 45 cm, 2018

Mammalian Egg at Main Street

at Ashley Berlin, Dec 2021

acrylic and silk on canvas, 120 cm x 155 cm, 2023

acrylic on canvas, 75 x 80 cm, 2017

In the category of creaturely being
poems and organisms are sisters
coiling and uncoiling
in rival writhing blooms.

A gulf opens as doom cracks a
careful egg. Breach, breach!

Back up. Solid egg rolls to a stop, taps a stone,
two eyeballs spliced like a mirror’s joint.

Pierced, wounded, aroused, panting, bleeding, sucking,
languishing, exulting, enlarging, and diminishing,
basically going “all the way”
full of hot drool, eyes the color of a lung.

The drop of drool that loads the cup over
easy, over careful—a care full of egg
tussling with ghostly tremors,
some alien taint the color of a lung.

Descending negation:
the marble chips itself away
over centuries, over easy times and fucking miserable times,
over and over, flop and flop.

A second birthing, an over birthing, so over birthing
particular creatures, that is, whereas the category
of creaturely being coils over
the cup that boils over
then rubs Vaseline on the cracks at the corners of its mouth
parts, split and lick,
what is not, not ourselves.

He opened his eyes and saw nothing
but the cracks at the corners of his own eyes,
those lovely and those nasty tools.

There are four meanings of nothing;
all of them relate to god
and none of them to the eye
which always has a standpoint, a problem,
a simple care and twin.

There is no problem that is not a problem to someone
like the tempting myth of vision, the eye that fucks the world.
Careful, egg: don’t overburden the encasement,
the superessence, the hungry essence,
the essential of the shell ecstatic



Elvia Wilk, 2018

Mammalian Egg at Main Street Gallery, Toronto

Ebb Bayley & Tamen Perez

2018

acrylic, pastel and silk on canvas, 95 x 115 cm, 2023

Pine tar-treated carved frame, charcoal on paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2024

Bog Bodies with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony

acrylic on canvas, 60 x90 cm, 2019

acrylic and silk on canvas, 28” x 60”, 2025

March 6th - April 19th, 2025

Son of Bird Inferior  at Specialist

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of (frequently white cis male) individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.

Collaboration with Ro Bug
2021

acrylic and silk on canvas stretched on window frame, 70 × 150 cm, 2024

at Globe Gallery, Grabowsee

acrylic, ash and pastel on canvas, 90 x 70 cm, 2021

with adjacent Sebastian Charm: hearth tongs, pearls, beads, ceramic and straw, 2021

Hearth tongs, pearls, beads, ceramic and straw, 2021

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 140 x 115 cm, 2021

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 110 x 90 cm, 2021

Works on Pulpy

Ebb Bayley and Tamen Perez

I arrived with stolen diamonds
the monoculture of leather 
and bone,
the federal unions
the holy communions
hallucinations
mosques of ash
muscle-color tulips
my beaten horses 
offerings
cotton
smoke
the first taste of sweet
the alluvial toxins 
the green eyes
dry eyes 
industrial seduction 
of the heart
leper gold
blue hands
sweaty lungs 
the beauty from within
the mine 
the extortion 
the extraction 
the silent
the sentient.
No one warned me.
Some faces undo you.

Exhibition poem by Mayra Rodríguez-Castro

Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 21” x 49” 2025

acrylic and silk on canvas, 120 cm x 155 cm, 2023

collaboration with Ro Bug
2021

Bog Bodies

with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony

When walking on the bog, the pressure of our feet compresses the lungs of the dead, whose voices emerge in response to our presence. Carter & Bayley reconstruct a hyperstitional loop of relation where to be buried is not to be erased, but to enter a circuit of communication between the past and future.

featuring a 20-channel fixed sound installation by Scott Carver

----------------------

Early in the morning we

walk out onto the spongy dark earth.

Before the dew evaporates

it reveals their forms beneath.

The pressure of our weight on the peat

pushes the lungs of the bog

bodies into a fluted exhale.

We might also slip under

the prickling acidic softness,

A reed clenched in our teeth.

We exhale, we hum,

we dye ourselves in the pressure.

One time, although many more times too,

-because there is nothing

but stretching loops here-

We breathe, we hum. We slip further

into the brown sponge conduit.

Bouncing feet from great distance

precuss softly against us.

Before the dew evaporates early and cold.

The dew never forms on top of the bodies.

They are traced in outlines of dryness.

The dew never forms on top of the

primordial trees slumbering.


People with longs sticks come

to prod the trees. Some are removed.

We hum. We slip further.

----------------------

-Ebb Bayley

Pine tar-treated carved frame, charcoal on paper, 70 x 100 cm, 2024

Bog Bodies with Scott Carver at Horse & Pony

acrylic and silk on canvas, 150 x 70 cm, 2024

Mammalian Egg at Main Street, Toronto, ON

Ebb Bayley & Tamen Perez

acrylic and silk on canvas, 125 x 150 cm, 2024

at Globe Gallery Grabowsee

--------------

There’s no bottom

To where you thought there was nothing

The hungry dirt, the knotted pit

The hole on the side of the borrowed road

The slice of stump cross-sected

For some brutal postcards

An impatient clearance of task brooms

One honey self and two bee self

Are tumbled in a snarl towards the water

Licking rust and slippy tools

Familiar soft sediment of a smeared edge

She thrives in the rushes

She thrives in the rushes

If you forget you’ll remember

If you forget you’ll remember

True Colors at Trautwein Herleth

(top) Humming Form, 2024
acrylic and silk on canvas
50 × 150 cm

(bottom) Form of Whistling Walls, 2024
acrylic and silk on canvas
70 × 150 cm

The exhibition True Colors comprises works by Olga Balema, Ebb Bayley, Edith Deyerling, Peter Fend, Mickael Marman, Henrik Olesen, Susanne Paesler, and Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo).

Color is thought of as a foundational element of art, but the observation of color is not usually considered so subjectively – a red painting is a red painting. Although, obviously, this is not exactly true. In the early 1800s, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set out to record his views on the nature of colors and how they are perceived. The result is a collection of observations and experiments that do not explain or theorize, but point towards the subjectivity of perception. His writings alternate between scientific and mystic. Wittgenstein said, "I believe that what Goethe was really seeking was not a physiological but a psychological theory of colors.”

The artworks collected here use color psychologically. Some as a foil or means of misdirection, others to challenge the perception of their audience, and others as alternative forms of identification or representation.

featured here on Contemporary Art Daily

A non-binary and non-hierarchical tarot deck designed and illustrated by Ebb Bayley in 2020.

3rd edition in 2023

2020

acrylic and silk on canvas, grommets, string, stones, 140 x 115 cm, 2022

acrylic on canvas, 69 x 52 cm, 2021

acrylic and pastel on canvas, 25” x 60” 2025

Lake Flexer, 150 x 125 cm, acrylic and silk on canvas, 2023

Tidal Mouth to Mouth, 150 x 125 cm, acrylic and silk on canvas, 2023

at Globe Gallery, Countdown Grabowsee

Pine tar-treated carved frame and print, 20 x 50 cm, 2024

----------------------

Early in the morning we

walk out onto the spongy dark earth.

Before the dew evaporates

it reveals their forms beneath.

The pressure of our weight on the peat

pushes the lungs of the bog

bodies into a fluted exhale.

We might also slip under

the prickling acidic softness,

A reed clenched in our teeth.

We exhale, we hum,

we dye ourselves in the pressure.

One time, although many more times too,

-because there is nothing

but stretching loops here-

We breathe, we hum. We slip further

into the brown sponge conduit.

Bouncing feet from great distance

precuss softly against us.

Before the dew evaporates early and cold.

The dew never forms on top of the bodies.

They are traced in outlines of dryness.

The dew never forms on top of the

primordial trees slumbering.


People with longs sticks come

to prod the trees. Some are removed.

We hum. We slip further.

----------------------

Poem by Ebb Bayley

Speaker sculptures, a series of 22, dimensions various

Built for a 22-channel fixed sound installation by Scott Carver

at 13 Vitrine, April 2023

I have orange and gnarly hands and they write
and they’re not mine?
papier mâché
Linus’ security blanket
indigo child or
a woman under the influence
I chew the world out to such a degree
I can no longer hear properly
alla fine é così
si perde sangue e si fa sanguinare
merde de lune

Lisa Varotto, 2023

acrylic and silk on canvas, 30" x 40" 2025

March 6th - April 19th, 2025

Son of Bird Inferior  at Specialist

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of (frequently white cis male) individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.

Thinset cement, acrylic and cardboard, 10’ x 17” 2025

acrylic and silk on canvas, 125 x 150 cm, 2024

at Globe Gallery Grabowsee

--------------

There’s no bottom

To where you thought there was nothing

The hungry dirt, the knotted pit

The hole on the side of the borrowed road

The slice of stump cross-sected

For some brutal postcards

An impatient clearance of task brooms

One honey self and two bee self

Are tumbled in a snarl towards the water

Licking rust and slippy tools

Familiar soft sediment of a smeared edge

She thrives in the rushes

She thrives in the rushes

If you forget you’ll remember

If you forget you’ll remember

-------

-Ebb Bayley

Bag, Bug-Out supplies, mud, ribbons, dimensions variable 2025

acrylic on canvas, 65 x 55 cm, 2022

acrylic and silk on canvas, 12” x 14” 2025

March 6th - April 19th, 2025

Son of Bird Inferior  at Specialist

“He didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe a long time, maybe just a little. It was as if the dying fire had hypnotized him, or maybe he’d fallen asleep. But when suddenly he heard Sugg’s voice, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if Sugg was really talking.
“Know the story of black bark?” Sugg’s voice asked. It was completely dark now.
Rawley couldn’t see even the barest glimpse of the other man. He waved his fingers in front of his face but couldn’t see those either.
“Black what?” he asked.
“Bark,” said Sugg.
“Like from a tree?”
“Sure,” said Sugg. “Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” asked Rawley, more awake now, irritated. “Either it is or it isn’t.”
It was as if Sugg hadn’t heard. He was already telling the story. “A man found a piece of black bark in his coat pocket,” he said. “He wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. It was just there.”
He paused for long enough that Rawley asked, “And that’s the story?”
“More or less,” said Sugg. “The whole of it gathers up in those words, in that beginning. Everything else is just teasing it out.”
“What kind of story is that?”
“Shall we tease it out?” asked Sugg.
Rawley shrugged, then realized Sugg wouldn’t see it. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“You’ll sleep soon enough,” said Sugg. “For now, listen.”
- Brian Evenson, Collapse of Horses

This work is situated in a pit, concerned with burial as a magical act. Son of Bird Inferior is based in Irish folklore of the wren, the “king of all birds” who cheated his way to this title by riding on the eagle. A sacred bird to druids, stories of the wren were slurped up into christian practice out of long pagan histories across Europe. A yearly ritual burying of the bird is performed by “Wrenboys” on St Stephen’s day. This burial works as both a curse and a spell for plenty in the next year; community members who don’t pay into the communal pot are threatened with burial of the wren near their home, bringing ill will or death.

Ebb Bayley appropriates the winter ritual of burying the wren. He instead enacts a type of inversion of the curse by burying a Bug Out Bag: an organized go-bag of necessities born of anticipation of collapse or catastrophe whose ideology tends to be invested in a narrative of (frequently white cis male) individualist survival. Inhabiting the role of Wrenboy, Bayley buries these collections of necessary objects and wren-like hero narratives as a ritual curse. Sculptural detritus from this burial are shown alongside the paintings. The paintings work both as bodies of buried birds and as a type of 'wren bush' – the traditional wreath frame which holds the wren, made from plants, decorated with ribbons and the remnants of hyperstitional Bug Out Bags. Forms emerge and dissolve as if crushed through time and underground pressure. They are anatomical-topographical landscapes in an underground visitation.

Underlying the work is a framing borrowed from Brian Evenson’s horror short story Black Bark. In this story, one cowboy tells another a story, insisting “That’s not part of the story... That’s the part that gets left out. I’m telling black bark, and I know what’s part of it and what isn’t.” This story about what is told and what is omitted works as a potent reflection of colonial narrative. Together the wren, the Bug Out Bag, and the Black Bark tell a gaping and redacted story about the nature of knowing. The parts that get left out, the parts that are buried. This is a horror story about the gender of folkloric birds, and the inside of a cowboy’s pocket.