Pet Penthouse
“People persevere in feeding their need for contact with nature, but what satisfies that longing is increasingly notional. Our culture surrounds itself with natural forms; patterns of flora and fauna abound on walls, sheets, and clothes, but we remove ourselves from the real things in their normal environments. I think we have become a species that prefers the substitute”. Catherine Chalmers: American Cockroach 2004.1
My initial, personal understanding of Chalmer’s quote was that many humans use idealistically ‘pretty’ and ‘happy’ animal-related imagery, consciously and subconsciously, in their daily lives for various reasons, rather than associating themselves with the ‘real’ thing, and often oblivious of, or intentionally denying, the various forms of cruelty inflicted on animals daily.
By manipulating common and recognisable household items and furnishings, I have created an installation that represents a human home environment, to illustrate what I believe to be irregularities and contradictions in how humans perceive, utilise and represent non-human animals.
My process involved identifying animal related issues that are important to me and then metaphorically ‘combining’ them with found objects, although not necessarily in that order. Sometimes I discovered the found object first and then wrestled with practical methods of alteration and intervention to illustrate the animal issue.
The exhibition title – Pet Penthouse – uses a play on words one may associate with the objectification of women in pornographic publications and by association the references to women as ‘pieces of meat’ – a comparison too vast to include in this statement – but rather that in the context of my installation is intended to describe an urban human dwelling, that appears disconnected from the natural world, but that can accommodate nature, domesticated and otherwise, and representations there of.
Sally Rumball
October 25th 2011
My initial, personal understanding of Chalmer’s quote was that many humans use idealistically ‘pretty’ and ‘happy’ animal-related imagery, consciously and subconsciously, in their daily lives for various reasons, rather than associating themselves with the ‘real’ thing, and often oblivious of, or intentionally denying, the various forms of cruelty inflicted on animals daily.
By manipulating common and recognisable household items and furnishings, I have created an installation that represents a human home environment, to illustrate what I believe to be irregularities and contradictions in how humans perceive, utilise and represent non-human animals.
My process involved identifying animal related issues that are important to me and then metaphorically ‘combining’ them with found objects, although not necessarily in that order. Sometimes I discovered the found object first and then wrestled with practical methods of alteration and intervention to illustrate the animal issue.
The exhibition title – Pet Penthouse – uses a play on words one may associate with the objectification of women in pornographic publications and by association the references to women as ‘pieces of meat’ – a comparison too vast to include in this statement – but rather that in the context of my installation is intended to describe an urban human dwelling, that appears disconnected from the natural world, but that can accommodate nature, domesticated and otherwise, and representations there of.
Sally Rumball
October 25th 2011
Views of installation
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