Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World
Whitechapel Gallery, London

IT'S rare to be met by birdsong in an art exhibition, but New Yorker Mark Dion’s installation The Library for the Birds does just that. Beautiful white, orange and grey zebra finches tweet and chatter convivially on the branches of a dead apple tree in a capacious aviary well stocked with seeds, fruit and water.

Individual birds suddenly swoop off in graceful elliptical flights or dart busily here and there for no apparent reason. They seem oblivious to the books or objects such as catapults and shotgun shells shelved on the tree’s branches and tucked at its base, yet these are potentially useful to bird survival, since they relate to the human pursuit of birds, whether benign or predatory.