After all this research and finishing my dissertation it means i can now focus on more studio work, before my research I was mainly sketching and collaging. Polly Morgan amongst others has inspired me to change from sketching to more installation like work, or to atleast change my use in materials.
It also made me think about my love of the materials i intended to use. I then realised I already have a large amount of fur ( recycled from coats from the 70’s) and I have antlers on my wall. So i clearly love the use of animals, so iu wont find it a problem using it within my art.
so I have ordered a fox skull that i would like to use within my work, perhaps inspired by Damiens Hirsts For the love of God. I have also ordered fox masks ( faces ) and glass eyes, This made me think about fitting these pieces togethre, they will all be different sizes, so they will not fit naturally, it will look muddled and messy, possibly much like Walter potters taxidermy, this could be an interesting effect.
I like the use of animals within art, ( providing no animals come to harm or suffer for the sake of the art) as it does make us question life and death , and also our own morality at the same time. I also like the use of animals as it hints at Britains strong culture of hunting too.
Damien Hirst is the latest artist i looked at when researching animals used within contemporary art, he uses yet another process fo preservation. he sets his dead animals in formaldyhede. MOst of us know all about his work, which focuses on ideas of life and death , he says there is nothing else to focus on, life is obviously about life itself and therefore death.
He creates work which features whole animals preserved as in glass boxes, he also creates new creatures in glass boxes. None of the animals were harmed in order to make the shock art.
these pieces are perhaps more art because of the sheer size and fear impact with a shark in the room, perhaps less because of the thought of inter species relations, or animal torture.
Although he has also been accused of animal cruelty with In and Out of Love where he reportedly killed 9000 butterflies by displaying them although with fresh fruit, they died inside, and they were replaced with more. Many also would have been trodden on by the viewers.
so aswell as saying he does not harm live animals,infact within this partcular piece he did.
There are other forms of preservation apart from taxidermy. Plastination is another and is also used within contemporary art and science.
Dr Gunther van Hagens invented plastination, most people wll know him from the channel 4 series of him disecting animals.
He uses plastination to let the audience see inside the animal, he turns the animals liquids into polymers so it preserves them by basically making them plastic, he can also use dyes to make the liquids more clear and visible. by doing this, they become shock art. he uses animals that are donated to him, they are not harmed for this purpose or reason. so technically no animals were harmed to create art although real animals were used. again, this art questions life and death of the animal and therefore makes the viewer question their life and death .
TAXIDERMY.
After looking very briefly at some of the histroy of taxidermy, it lead me into current taxidermists and probably the most well known and contemporary artists that uses taxidermy, POLLY MORGAN, i fell in love with her work straight away.
Polly Morgan, born 1980 is a british artist sits at the forefront of contemporary taxidermy, her work is shocking, her animals look alive and realistic. However they do not sit in their natural surroundings.Her work is about the corruption of nature,it shows octopus coming out of fox carcasses, it places animals in scenery they are not exoected to be in, it removes all sterotypes and associations.
she gives ideas of life and death but in a subtle way.
All the animals Morgan uses have been donated to her once they have already died, so no animals are harmed to make her art work. It could almost be seen as recycling their bodies.
After looking at Patricia Piccinini and her linking the use of animals within science and art I moved forward in my research into sciences that are considered art.
I first stumbled onto TAXIDERMY, and began to research how taxidermy was used through historyand how it changed etc
I started with Charles Wilson Peale ( 1741-1827), an American taxidermist, he used taxidermy more as a science than an art. he placed his animals in their natural surroundings so audiences would understand how they lived.
This lead me to look at Carl Akeley (1846-1926) who also set his animals in a scientific way in their natural surroundings, he improved the methods of taxidermy which lead into Walter Potter ( 1835-1918) who was a taxidermist from around the same time ” the golden age of taxidermy”. however Potter did not display his taxidermied animals natural, he personified them, dressing them in clothes, giving them expressions and displaying them at tea parties and in schools. This would have shocked at the time so fall under shock art also, whereas again perhaps less shocking now, especially as the skill used in potters work was somewhat low. people said he was an awful taxidermist so perhaps removed the effect of reality as his animals almost looked like teddy bears. They were unrealistic and not believable and so lost their shock factor.
