Nature and Culture – animal as object

Based on years of observation and research within the bird and mammal collections at the Queensland Museum, this body of work seeks to explore the objectification of animals in nature through taxidermy, and in culture through the souvenir. We have, and are creating, facsimiles and profiting from these copies despite the real risk of losing the originals.

What is our uneasy relationship with animal objects, particularly taxidermy and the mass-produced souvenir? As a self-confessed collector, what is my responsibility in all this? Why do I tend to want to order and display, collect and own the natural world?

Through mashups of early scientific taxonomy charts and illustrations, museum taxidermy, pop culture and the mass-produced souvenir, this body of work is presented as a contemporary Wunderkammer (a cabinet of curiosity). It asks questions about artifice, collection, consumerism, mimicry, wonder and beauty.