The
permanent collection of the natural history museum is a hidden world, the
backstage area of the museum. It is here that the bulk of the collection is
stored and maintained, the majority of pieces never leaving the dim back room
spaces for the glossy front-stage of the museum floor. These spaces are unknown
to most museum visitors, hidden away in roofs and cellars, depots and storage
rooms.
In the spaces behind the scenes the
barrier between the viewer and the viewed is broken down, the objects no longer
form part of an elaborate fiction into which we can become immersed. These
spaces are rich with tensions and contradictions, modernity and tradition,
natural and artificial, reality and fiction.
My practice looks at spaces in which we undergo some form of
encounter, and our reactions and expectations relating to this encounter. Our
encounters with animals, particularly wild animals, usually involves the
presence of some kind of frame, we are separated either by the glass of the
museum display, the front of the cage, or the screen of the television. Much
has been written about the theoretical nature of the encounter between man and
animal, but in my work I am more interested in the emotional reaction of the
encounter.
Standing
in front of a museum display we must move between two states, the state in
which we recognise the artificiality of the scene or object, and the state in
which we suspend our disbelief to enter into a play-along relationship with the
exhibit, allowing ourselves to be transported into the fiction, and the magic
of the museum to take hold.
We
are conditioned to have certain expectations of display, not just in museum
exhibits but in natural history illustrations, paintings, and even the
presentation of live animals for showing, there are conventions and
expectations which colour our expectations and our perception of what is
correct or even perfect. These conventions become so accepted as to become
invisible; it takes a moment of self-alienation, or to see these objects beyond
the expected context, for us to begin to see the act of presentation that we
usually overlook.
The art of the taxidermist is to make the animal appear as
natural as possible. However as the principle purpose is for display this
ÒnaturalnessÓ is often highly superficial. In many older taxidermy mounts the
objects were to be seen only from one side in the display case, similar to the
way in which a showing dog is seen only from one angle by the judge, and the
objects reflect this, the hidden side often being ignored, a hiding place for
unsightly stitching and missing features, eyes were often only included on the
Òdisplay sideÓ.
I
am interested in the spaces and frames within which these encounters take
place, and how these spaces affect our perception of the objects. Is a mounted
animal strange within the context of a museum because it is beyond the realm of
the wild animal, or is it stranger to see a mounted animal in a Victorian
landscape, because in truth the realm of the stuffed animal is the hunting
cabinet and museum?
The
permanent collection is a strange contradiction to many of our associations
regarding museums. Although carefully preserved for the sake of historic or
scientific record many of these objects will never be seen by the public, and
are accessed only by occasional scholars. The very act of display is contrary
to the main aims of the collection staff, to keep the objects in carefully
controlled environments away from the dangers of the museum floor.
This
series also looks at the role of the museum in establishing status, the very
act of placing an object within a museum context, or behind a sheet of glass is
making statement about its worth. The act
of displaying an item in a museum echoes the act of the photographic frame, highlighting certain
objects, and excluding others, effectively shaping our understanding of what we
are seeing. In a similar way this project curates a personal vision of the
natural history collection, a more emotive choice of the objects and spaces
that form these collections.
Taxidermy
mount, a
taxidermy specimen in which the skin has been mounted over a resin form or
papier-m‰chŽ cast to create a lifelike reconstruction of the animal.
Permanent
collection,
the collection of specimens and objects owned by the museum, rather than items
on loan for display or as part of touring exhibitions. Often a large percentage
of the permanent collection is retained for scientific or historical value,
rather than for display.