Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Angela Singer

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Angela Singer...Artist, Animal Activist, Goddess! She uses her taxidermy art as a platform to voice her concerns regarding the relationship between Humans and Nature. Particularly the unnecessary violence humans subject animals too, as well as the notion that people are inherently separate from and superior to other species. Some of her work is rather macabre and reflects the helpless and docile nature of the hunted, exaggerates the blatant violence and cruelty of the killing. For example, a rabbit she altered was used in an antivivisection campaign she worked on with an animal rights group "Animal Liberation Victoria" Australia. And the mounted deer trophy where she embellished the bullet wounds in the animal’s skin, which previously had been carefully diminished by the original taxidermist. Her subjects are then properly lamented with decorations of gemstones, jewelry, and funeral flowers.

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"New Zealand artist Angela Singer explores the atavistic notion of the hunt, and its trophies. Like some women’s taste for fur, the hunt represents a regressive desire to reconnect with the instinctual animal self, particularly as a means to release repressed notions of conventional gender roles, in this case, man as primordial hunter. Singer uses taxidermy to present the pathetic (and actually quite bathetic) results of these primitive urges which, apart from what they imply for the animal, are so out of pace with contemporary notions of decorum, representing instead a striving for instinctual authenticity that approaches kitsch. Singer’s animal trophies evince an almost unbearable sense of realism..Contemporary mythologies of the animal are somehow fused with this sense of imminent mourning, along with a renewed curiosity in animal alterity.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing post, as always. Is there a link?
Thanks again for all you do.

nefaeria said...

Her artwork is quite stunning and I love the message behind it. Thanks for sharing!

Kramer said...

New art work posted on the Angela Singer facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angela-Singer/102874783129867