Damien Hirst’s riches and hype are credited to diamonds… and his formaldehyde-pickled sharks and bisected cows. For this, Morrissey says “Hirst’s head should be kept in a bag.” Using dead animals for art is indeed a sensitive practice with its own culture and cliches. Since Walter Potter’s 19th century taxidermy arrangements that inspired Radiohead, the practice birthed the Rogue Taxidermy Society, a set of ethics, grand-scale museum works and even a Chernobyl Chicken or two. The moral tensions inherent to the work provide plenty fodder for shock art and material for haunting conceptual pieces. Let’s take a look at a few and get conflicted.
Claire Morgan‘s Fantastic Mr Fox is taxidermied and poised among a perfect cube of nylon and fishing hook-suspended, lead-weighted pieces of torn black polythene… and rotted rabbit meat. The original purpose of taxidermy — to preserve forever — is subverted. Death is on display. And that applies to strawberries too.
Comments (6)
wicked!
Shame you always neglect Australian artists in your ‘global’ lists! Check out the mind-bogglingly beautiful work – jewellery and museum level contemporary art pieces – of Julia De Ville (http://juliadeville.com/). The website alone is a joy.
and for more on death and art see The Dying Artist live weekend and symposium coming up over Easter at the ICA
http://www.ica.org.uk/28657/Talks/A-Dying-Artist.html
…taxidermy artists who aren’t Damian Hirst? i prefer to look at taxidermy artist angela singer who is most UNLIKE damian hirst and all those other ‘taxidermy artists’ who use ‘roadkill dead animals that died of natural causes’ **cough, cough** http://www.angelasinger.com/
I would definitely include Tessa Farmer in this list too, although I’m not sure if she considers herself a taxidermy artist or not.
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