Wednesday 6 February 2013

Zoo As A Gallery, Camperdown Conversations

In January, 2013 Beth Savage and I met to discuss the concept of the zoo as a gallery - what could this mean? What would we consider? What would we challenge? 


Before holding our conversations, we decided upon six topics to act as focal points for our discussions - value, aesthetics, roles and symbols, site/situation/proximity, the gaze and ethics - and each put forward a text relating to our thinking about individual topics. The conversations weren't confined to the topics and texts we presented but were often guided by them, so that the six conversations have overlaps but are distinct in their content.


We made notes on screen prints Beth has worked on as part of her Residency at Camperdown Wildlife Centre. Toy animals explored the words as we explored our thoughts on the ethical considerations of animals in art, life, zoos etc. This project will continue to evolve. As yet it has no determined end-point, or aim, but I expect that once we listen back to the conversations we will have more of a sense of what route it could take.


Our day of conversation was recorded and can be heard by following this link from Beth's blog, there are also details of the texts/articles we read.






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