Exhibition...

Tony Hutchings Photography

Two by Two

Two by Two celebrates the wild and domesticated mysteries of the animal kingdom, and of mankind’s sometimes healthy, sometimes unhealthy, obsession with other species. From wild beasts to domestic pets, animals have traditionally sustained our nutritional, emotional, religious, artistic and scientific needs and desires. Our relationships with the animal aspect of Nature has allowed the human aspect of Nature to reach ambitious cultural heights throughout history, for better and worse. All the while animals have lived out their evolutionary journeys without any need for humanity.

Our ever-decreasing daily exposure to animals that is a feature of the contemporary western lifestyle, has impelled us to try to reintroduce them into our lives using a variety of cultural means, that includes the making of animal artworks by the artists in the present exhibition Two by Two.

This exhibition, presented throughout three spaces, is an installation that celebrates the reintroduction of the animal into our daily lives, by allowing the viewer to undergo a circular rite of passage from the domesticated culturality to the wild naturality of animals and back again. Each of the artworks in this circular journey may be conceived to lie somewhere between the polar opposites of naturality and culturality on a spectrum of naturalculturality.

The exhibition title alludes to the story of Noah, a human whose actions, whether self-motivated or not, taught us a perpetually valuable lesson: that of prioritising the welfare and survival of all animal species, which in Noah’s case was an attempt to re-establish a previously lost Paradise.

The welfare of animals and their importance to human culture that inspired Noah’s heroic act, also underlies increasingly global ecological activities, that include the work of the animal charities Celia Hammond Animal Trust and ifaw to which we are donating a part of the sale price of the works sold in this exhibition.

Participating artists: