I have been working on my ideas around the presentation of my work and the inferences and associations I can use to layer the display. The artists I have been looking at include Mark Quinn, Gaby Taplick, and Damien Hurst. But I have been particularly struck by Mark Dions installation work. I find the way he uses the principles of taxonomy and Museum systems of classification, and then subverts them very relevant to my work. I am seeking to blur boundaries in the classification of my forms and to raise questions in the viewer, and Marks work consistently blurs the boundaries between natural history, art and science. I find the way he questions the classification systems place on objects by professionals and Institutions very relevant.
I have visited Manchester Natural History Museum though I had found they did not have a particular botany section on display at the moment. However, I was excited to go as they have 2 areas of great interest to me: One was the Darwin exhibition on at the moment and the other was the Mark Dion Installation ‘Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy’ 2005. This grand sounding name represents the culmination of Dion’s working through the Manchester Museum’s own collections, especially the more neglected pieces. This Installation has been incorporated into the Darwin exhibition and I believe is to become a permanent fixture in the museum. In the installation Dion attempts to classify the unclassifiable while working with and exploring the museums own systems of working. He plays with the ambiguity of nature by assembling a whole array of boundary crossing, hybrid objects. This was great as I will be completing my essay about Dion and how his work relates to mine soon.
