As you may already know, I am curating an exhibition for the Museum of Vancouver (in Vancouver, Canada - my hometown) on the cultural history of taxidermy.  Most of the animals come from the museum's own collection of taxidermy which has been in storage for decades.  The exhibition is entitled - of course! - Ravishing Beasts and will be open October 21st 2009 until February 28th 2010.  Over the next few months, I will post a few updates and items of interest as we prepare for the opening.

A month of so ago, Joan Seidl (the museum's Director of Collections and Exhibitions) and I drove out to Surrey to visit Frank and Arlene Gilbert, owners of Fur & Feather Taxidermy.  We were on a quest for a big animal, a really, really big beast.  I had been hoping to find a standing grizzly bear, but the Gliberts' moose won my vote.

I needed something impressively large to round out a section called SIZE MATTERS.  With taxidermy, size does matter.  A hummingbird and a moose might be the same size on tv, but when you have them right in front of you ... there is no comparison.  The museum has lots of little things, but nothing that really captured the raw, crazy enormity of that moose.   Here is a picture of me + moose in the Gilberts' studio:

The moose is an extra special specimen. And not only because it won Judge’s Choice, People’s Choice, and 1^st Place at the 1986 Taxidermy International Competition in Calgary, Alberta.  It's special because of how Gilbert made it. 

Because splitting antlers disqualifies animals from entering the record books, Gilbert decided to make the entire head removable. He carved the original body sculpture from blue Styrofoam. From this sculpture, Gilbert made a mold, which was used to make the fiberglass form on which the skin is mounted. The head slides into place on steel rods. Here is an image of the detachable head.  Crazy stuff!

Mr. Deans will be unveiling new trophies from his recent
hunting and fishing expedition to uncharted lands.

The players:
Lord Whimsy..... exhibiting oddities both living and dead
Ancestral Diet...soundscapes from the depths of Earth, Tooth, and Fog...
Lady Circus... there’s no telling what these ladies will do...
Madame Blair Ward...an improvisational master leads us through her tangled melodies

Glasslands Gallery. 7pm. Only $6
289 Kent Avenue, between South 2nd and South 1st streets.
Take the L train to Bedford Avenue, and walk towards the water.
$5 if you RSVP to zev.deans@gmail.com

Several years ago, Mary Frey was captured by the sad beauty of old, perhaps neglected taxidermy at the Springfield Science Museum.  In turn she captures that emotion on film with an ambrotype process that mimic the gentle fragility of the creatures themselves.  In her own words:

Photography invites us to pay attention. It describes with economy, precision and detail. It enables us to stare, scrutinize, and become voyeurs. Taxidermy allows us to do the same. Its complete replication of an animal’s stance, gesture and look provides us a way to study and comprehend its existence. Yet I find that these animals, often portrayed in suspended animation, seem simultaneously strange, ghostly and beautiful. Their gaze is both familiar and unknown. I intend this work to move beyond what is merely seen to the territory of the imagination, where what is remembered and known is transformed into something new.

Check out her website here + http://www.maryfrey.com/fauna/index.htm#title  to see more of her taxidermy works.

British vegetarian and artist Reid Peppard has created a rather distinctive series of animal jewellery. The works use animals that were either killed on the roads, by Peppard's cat or bought frozen from pet stores where they are sold as snake food. 

Peppard creates mice necklaces, winged headbands, and mouse-head cufflinks as sort of "found" object jewllery.

Not sure what to think?  Here are Peppard's own words to describe the pieces:

RP/ENCORE challenges our attitudes towards fur, leather and waste. In a world where leather is worn with out question by most, and replaced by un-biodegradable plastics by the rest, it is ironic that the image of an animal preserved using taxidermy is still enough to cause widespread outrage and fist banging. It is for this reason I taxidermy the prolific, consequential vermin result of London’s excess. A member of the UK's Guild of Taxidermists, I use both traditional and alternative methods of taxidermy to preserve and embellish creatures that are widely thought disgusting and unnecessary. When they become sculptural headpieces, necklaces and cuff-links, the specimens cease to be waste and become objects to behold. RP/ENCORE makes use of the city’s leftovers.

 Contact Peppard at www.reidpeppard.blogspot.com

Old news but still good news...

In January 2006, BGL - the collective name of artists Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière - presented the installationSe la jouer commercial (esthétique de présentation) at Montreal’s Art Mûr gallery.

Part commentary on consumer culture, part nod towards funfair extravaganza, visitors were required to enter the gallery through a turnstile. But no ordinary metal bar turnstile.  Hardly.  Nothing so drearily-trite as that.  This was a full bodied, real stuffed moose turnstile.  Visitors were required to grab whatever moose-part was closest and push the moose around.  

Read more here +
http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=8220

And also more about BGL in a Canadian Art article from 2006 here +
ttp://www.canadianart.ca/art/features/2006/09/01/through-the-looking-glass/

If you happen to be in New Zealand in the next month check out CREATURE DISCOMFORTS: DECORATING WITH DEATH at the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson.  Curator Anna-Marie White explains the exhibition:

Creature Discomforts explores our changing attitudes towards animals as a form of decoration.

It compares the current trend for taxidermy in contemporary art with historic artefacts from public museums and private collections. These include objects such as an albatross foot purse, an armadillo sewing basket, a peacock turban and a kiwi beak brooch – all coveted and glamorous accessories in their time but now considered gruesome relics of a different era.

Check out the exhibition site here +

http://thesuter.org.nz/whatson/creaturediscomforts.aspx

And a few images of the exhibition:

Check out Francesca Gavin's article on taxidermy in the April 09 issue of Wallpaper*.  She discussed the work of contemporary artists Polly Morgan, Alex Randall,  Sebastian Errazuriz, Joss Mckinleu, and Kelly McCallum and includes a quote from ravishingbeasts.  As Gavin writes, "Victorian taxidermy was all about scientific study and the natural world.  Now it's about inserting narrative, emotion and wit into everyday spaces."  Sebastian Errazuriz's duck lamp (below) is certainly an example of that.