Exhibition29 Jun – 18 Aug 2018
My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid
My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid explores our enduring fascination with the merging of the human and animal, and coincides with the…
Beyond taxidermy: Kate Clark & Julia deVille
Join us for a conversation to celebrate the opening of the new RMIT Gallery exhibition My Monster: The human animal hybrid (29 June – 18 August) with two well known artists who use taxidermy in their work.
New York-based sculptor Kate Clark’s work synthesises human faces with the bodies of animals, while Melbourne jeweller and taxidermist Julia deVille’s work is informed by a fascination with the acceptance of death expressed in Memento Mori jewellery of the 15th to 18th centuries and Victorian Mourning jewellery.
Clark says “The fusion of human and animal that I create presents a fiction suggesting that our human state is fully realized when we acknowledge both our current programming and our natural instincts. I emphasize the characteristics that separate us within the animal kingdom, and, importantly, the ones that unite us.”
She stitches the surreal creatures together like any taxidermist, but has a few quirks that make the art her own: she only works with imperfect, salvaged pelts that would likely be wasted, and patches up their holes—which often occur on their heads—with human faces made of clay.
Similarly, deVille employs taxidermy as a celebration of life and sees it as the preservation of something beautiful, only practising ethical taxidermy.
Images: Kate Clark, Gallant, 2016. Fallow Deer hide, antlers, clay, foam, thread, pins, rubber eyes, wire for hanging. Photo courtesy of the artist. Julia deVille, Peter, 2012. Rabbit and antique sterling silver goblet. Kate Clark, And She Meant it, 2010. Ram hide, apoxie, clay, foam, thread, pins, rubber eyes.
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