- Venue
- Extraordinary Objects Gallery
- Starts
- Saturday, July 2, 2022
- Ends
- Saturday, October 1, 2022
- Address
- 14 Green St, Cambridge CB2 3JU
- Location
- East England
- Organiser
- Extraordinary Objects
2 July – 2 October 2022
Private View | Friday 1 July | 6 – 9pm
Extraordinary Objects Gallery
14 Green St, Cambridge, CB2 3JU
You may not know it, but you can buy a dinosaur. In May 2022, Christie’s sold an entire Raptor skeleton for $12.4m. Meanwhile, in 2021 the auction house sold ‘Stan’ the T.Rex to a mysterious anonymous bidder for $31.8, the highest price ever paid at auction for a fossil. The previous record was set in 1997 with the sale of ‘Sue’, a largely complete T. Rex purchased by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History for $8.36 million (equivalent to nearly $13.5 million today). There has been a remarkable recent interest in collecting dinosaur skeletons, particularly among the rich and famous, with prices soaring and Dinos often disappearing from the realm of scientific research into the gilded homes of stars, never to be seen again.
In early 2020, The Connor Brothers, one of the world’s most controversial art duos, travelled to Tuscon, Arizona, for an exhibition. They happened to arrive at the time of the annual Fossil and Mineral Fair and, long time lovers of all things dinosaur, the pair bought a Thescelosaurus skeleton on a lay-away plan. Cue lockdown and two years later, the final payment made, they found that their fossil had disappeared, or, as they recount it, “someone stole our dinosaur”. The Connor Brothers spent the next six months on a mission to track down their missing 50-million-year-old skeleton. An extraordinary story evolved, featuring a stolen T-Rex, Nicolas Cage, the FBI, a trip to Mongolia, and a Mexican drug cartel. Never ones to shy away from the weird, the pair embraced the journey and followed their stolen dinosaur down it’s improbable rabbit hole. They comment, “If you’ve never been in the backroom of a New York gallery, negotiating the return of a stolen dinosaur with a movie star, and the lawyer of the world’s most infamous drug cartel leader, you’ll never quite understand how weird it was. We’ve always loved dinosaurs, but now we really fucking love dinosaurs.”
It is within this extraordinary context of ‘Dinomania’ that Cambridge contemporary art gallery, Extraordinary Objects presents its new exhibition Some Of My Best Friends Are Dinosaurs curated by internationally renowned artists The Connor Brothers alongside Gallery Director and Natural History enthusiast Carla Nizzola.
Showcasing a spectacular selection of natural history, alongside paintings from The Connor Brothers’ hugely popular Regression Series, Some Of My Best Friends Are Dinosaurs is the first exhibition of its kind, and offers visitors the opportunity to see many of the natural world’s most astonishing objects, alongside never before seen works by two of the UK’s most engaging artists. Highlights of the collection include many specimens rarely seen outside of a museum including the skull of a triceratops, meteorites, rare iridescent ammonites, an ichthyosaur, and a piece of the moon.
This exhibition is truly remarkable, it brings together the highly unusual, absolutely intriguing, and completely curious to create a space for questioning and offer an insight into the eternal mysteries of our world. Alongside a set of exceptional objects, collected with care, sits new works by acclaimed British Artist duo The Connor Brothers bringing the incredibly old and the cutting-edge contemporary into conversation. The exhibition is unlike any other, and speaks to a lengthy process of acquisitions motivated by irrevocable passion for the weird and wonderful that Gallery Director Carla Nizzola and The Connor Brothers share.
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE DINOSAURS
Curated by The Connor Brothers
2 JULY – 2 OCTOBER 2022
Private View | Friday 1 July | 6 – 9pm
EXTRAORDINARY OBJECTS
14 Green St, Cambridge CB2 3JU
