Artist Statement
In our projects we are involved in a deconstructive process where notions of wilderness are called into question. Underpinning much of what we do and make are issues of psychological and physical displacement or realignment in relation to land and environment and the effect these have on cultural perspectives. We are also working with the relationships that exist between individual people, societies, and cultures on the one hand and animals on the other. We are looking at the uses we have and have had for animals, both domestic and wild and also at different levels of what we term 'domestication' - from self through pet, working animal, livestock, game, feral to wild animal.1
In some instances we evoke or make or use of various creatures either alive or dead in order to examine their 'actual' and symbolic significance. Usually such significance can be seen as representative of either a particular cultural lifestyle or an observed/part-appropriated/adopted mythology.
Wilderness is a human concept defining amongst other things a world 'beyond' our control or even 'understanding'. It is the bracketing of a physical space in the larger context of a belief in human supremacy. The truth must be that to whatever small or large degree the state exists - if it exists at all, just as much within and around us as in any distant inaccessible location...
…even the landscape that we suppose to be most free of our culture may turn out on closer inspection, to be its product (S. Schama)
It is a conceit as profound and insidious as any dogma that conveniently marginalizes our relationship to our environment in this way. It presumes a difference and an 'apartness' to speculate on the polarity of wildness and domesticity. In accepting this difference as actual, it blinds us to the real understanding that may be revelatory. We are the animals along with the animals. Our lack of engagement with environment is demonstrated by our dependence on being insulated from it. In a current project involving the study of pets in human environments the results are illuminating.1 To photograph this relationship is to examine the inexpertness of the partnership, the oddness of this familiarity and intentionally expose something, which has been lost, that is, our access to the 'wild' both in our heads and there on the kitchen table or curled up by the fire.
In our cities, animals share our constructed environment, some invited, some not. Increasingly commonplace are the uninvited visitors that meet with our ambivalence according to their species. These animals have lost their fear and see new opportunities in the streets, on the wharves and in the subways. These are now the legitimate environments of a host of creatures previously associated with some natural idyll or farmyard. They choose to be dependent upon us whilst remaining independent of us, demonstrating opportunistic tendencies and adaptability, but above all, the ability to survive in changed conditions.
Our pets on the other hand are kept in protected environments, where fashions change and levels of ‘comfort’ seem only to rise. These environments nevertheless, are not tailored to their requirements, but to ours. We construct our environment to fit our needs, which are most often centred round ideas of our well-being and comfort. For their part they demonstrate remarkable tolerance, even acceptance of us and certainly in most cases, of the indulgence we heap upon them. It is hard to see them as fish out of water. They too have adapted.
To the extent that our work involves animals, it has been in acknowledgement of their historical, human associations and symbolism -– as the unwitting providers of food and clothing, as assistants in the securing of these provisions and as the subjects of human care and affection. They are alternately loved as friends, despised as vermin and everything in between.
More than all this, together, they are the hidden constituency, with which humans have had the most chequered relationship, offering some a more or less permanent place on the sofa beside us whilst driving some to extinction through fear or greed.2 As a consequence of this, the significance of some animals has for us become largely symbolic, of for instance, the northern wilderness,3 of extinction, of endangered status, and in association with humans, of cultural decline.
(1) "a fly in my soup", A public art work commissioned by The City
of Reykjavik, Iceland, begun spring 2005.
(2) “Big Mouth”, Installation Tramway Glasgow (15th April to 31st
of May 2004).
(3) “nanoq: flat out and bluesome” A project commissioned by Spike
Island, Bristol. Installation at Spike Island (26th Feb – 4th April 2004)
Photographic works to go on show in Museums 2004 to 2007. Publication launch,
spring 2006.