http://www.angelasinger.com/
If you click on this link it will lead you to the website of English artist and animal rights activist Angela Singer. Look at her work and leave your comments please. I will post a different link to a different artist every few days for you to comment on using the same following questions to help you, and me, to understand your perceptions of taxidermy in contemporary art.
How does it make you feel when you look at it?
Would you go to an exhibition that was displaying dead animals in this way?
It is such a curious art! It always makes me squirm a bit because of the process that must go on to get the end product... eeuch. and I always think, "awww poor animal". But I like the reason why Angela Singer does it, the part on her website where she says "“It seemed to me very disturbing that an enormous dead animal in a room could be ignored... hoped to be able to make the trophy more controversial, give it greater presence and make it not so easy to ignore." and that she does it to highlight the ethics of using animals for sort of our selfish decorative reasons..
ReplyDeleteSo I think her reasons for doing it are good... but even so, I still look at the photographs of her recent work and think, "awww, poor animal" because it seems so undignified for it to be used for this purpose and everyone to gawp at it!
So for your questions - it makes me feel a bit sad, a bit curious, a bit cringey, it makes me question why people do this to animals in the first place (the hunting for trophies etc and the actual taxidermy itself).
And I think I would go to an exhibition displaying animals this way because of the message in Angela Singer's case, but I'm not sure how long I could stay there!!
Also I think on the other hand, I do think taxidermy is important for preserving animals that can show future generations what different animals and species we have in case they become extinct etc - but would just hope that they are from animals that have died naturally rather than killed for this purpose.
Hope that is useful and if not sorry for clogging up your blog with my rambles! xx
ps.. it is almost quite a magical thing too!
ReplyDeleteand you wonder why they haven't ever done it with humans....or have they?!
Whatever that THING is on the first "welcome" page you get too, that really put me off and made me feel like I didn't want to look at any more. But the other things that were less covered in goo I thought were quite interesting to look at, and some were even aesthetically quite pleasing to me. I don't have a problem with stuffed animals in glass cases, in fact I quite like seeing these. I think that, as they were already dead anyway, what this artist has done with them is acceptable. I might be less into her art work if she had killed and stuffed the animals herself especially for the purpose of then doing weird things with them, an odd distinction to make perhaps. It's weird, I wouldn't NOT go into a gallery because this work was on display, but I don't think I would linger. Having said that, sometimes a sort of grim fascination takes over and you want to see more to see what will shock you, it's a very experiential sort of artform I think. It's weird! Hoep this helps some.
ReplyDeleteI really like this artist's work. It draws the viewer in and offers the opportunity to think about taxidermy in a different light. It also has a strange sort of beauty. Personally, I would enjoy going to see an exhibition of this artist’s work. The recycling element also interests me too.
ReplyDeleteThis artist has a prespective that makes me wonder where art is going, in a similar vein to damien hurst. The pieces do have some likeable elements however its not something that i would take time out to attend, as the two subject matters seem poles apart and dont fit together for me. Dead is rarely beautiful. life is.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly how I feel about this, but in response to Emma H, I don't think any stuffed animal on display can be dignified, anymore than a Mummy at the BM is... but then again, dust to dust and all that - perhaps I need to stop thinking about what are essentially corpses as connected to living things. They are not.
ReplyDelete