Animal Gods

by Amber Alcock and Gabriele Jacobs

24.11.23 - 11.01.24

“The challenge posed in re-conﬁguring our understanding of the animal lies in suspending one's knowledge of the certainties of nature itself, to acquire a critical awareness of the relational modes we have established with animals and ecosystems and ﬁnd the courage to envisage new ones.” - Aloi, G. 2011

Animals in the history of art seem to have inhibited two distinctly opposed areas; that of food, and that of god. This exhibition aims to critique the kinds of relational modes the modern human has formed with nature and the macrocosmic environment, speciﬁcally through the multifarious lens of the archetypal symbology, spirituality and mythology of the animal.

Our histories and stories are brimming with nefarious three-headed beasts, monsters that bring us foreboding messages within dreams and cataclysmic animal monstrosities. The ﬁguration of the animal and the state of the human on earth are inexplicably connected by a galaxy of juxtapositional mythologies. The word, “monster” comes from the Latin noun, monstrum, meaning “portent, or “divine sign” from the root verb monere, “to warn”. Using the innate symbology and mythology of ﬂora and fauna within the web of human storytelling and inﬂuence, the exhibition aims to question the ecological violence associated with our era.

catalogue

Animal Gods

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