The Return of the Native

This distinctively designed small-format publication chronicles a new body of work by the British artist, Suky Best. In The Return of the Native , Best highlights the gradual disappearance of hitherto common types of wildlife from their former habitats across the UK. Over a series of vivid and disarming photographs and short video animations, Best digitally ‘reintroduces’ a number of birds and insects into landscapes where they were previously seen in significant numbers but where they are now virtually extinct. The slightly studied and stylised nature of each composition, in which the respective elements don’t quite fit together, elicits a vague but deceptively disquieting sense of loss. Designed to resemble an old-fashioned Ladybird book of birds, this book acts as kind of field guide to Best’s recent work, incorporating the images of marsh warblers, nightingales, soldier flies and swallowtail butterflies etc. that make up The Return of the Native . The book also features a special introductory essay by one of Britain’s best-known writers on birds and birdwatching, Stephen Moss - author of Garden Birds (Collins) and Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching (Arum Press). A further essay, by the artist and writer Nicky Coutts, considers the themes and motifs of these new works in the context of Best’s fifteen-year practice as an artist.