This exhibition, Zoo 1994 -2017, is built around an idea to re visit the work Never Never Mind since it was part of the first exhibition I made for the Andrehn Schiptjenko gallery, Stockhom, Sweden in 1997. Zoo is part of their Future Revisited series, conceived to celebrate 25 years of their gallery. I felt while celebrating the past, Never Never Mind had potential to be reconfigured in a new way that was interesting to me. For the first time the work is installed as an unsynchronised three projection installation and with it's soundtracks overlapping.

The idea for the Zoo grew from this as I realised I had made quite a number of animal works over the years.

In most cases the depiction of animals, alongside other imagery and objects have been for me an indication of psychological conditions - and so maybe this is a zoo of neurological fragments.

I don’t consider my subject to be ‘animal’ as such, I am wary of themes and I never imagined that these works would appear together but their grouping for this exhibition has reinvigorated and offered new insights by doing so. It has been a totally interesting and unexpected adventure for me.

Together I notice that almost all my animals are trapped: by the bondage of harness or wraps, weight of cover, the limitations of screen or frame. They are caught in the light and in the web of their structures.

Almost all however have some glimmer of redemption – a claw cracks the surface of the paper, the eyes cut through to make a connection, or the sacrifice ensures an afterlife of sorts.

For His Own Good has been re imagined as a super sized mural pasted to the wall, a new version of 25 Watt Moon has been produced as a digital print and a small edition of Swedish Sausage Pelts have been made for the occasion - to be shown with the original 1994 work. Also included are more recent works incuding spiders embroidered onto canvas, mummified toy cats and a print of my dog Ethel.

AL

http://www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com/