For The Animals/To The Animals/Statement

Humans possess an intense and beautiful relationship with death, love and animals. The bond between the three is strong, but often unspoken.  This has been the point of departure for my work. I believe that the marriage between an individual and animals is strange, close and complex; be it with a pet, a childhood mascot, the birds in the sky or the meat on their plate.

 

Working with film has allowed me to explore these ideas, combining different visual and audio elements into one piece. I take naturalistic footage of animals which is then cut and pasted together to form a poetic portrait of nature, domesticity and dominion. Voiceovers – often of a contrasting or seemingly contradictory tone - are layered on top to piece together the underlying visual narrative, although much of this is left for the viewer to determine for themselves.

Large scale sculptural pieces or installations often accompany these film works. It is my intention to use these physical objects to enhance and heighten the emotive essence of the pieces, rather than to add any further narrative to the work. For these pieces the form of the human memorial is enlarged and exaggerated and dedicated to dead pets, road kill, and the victims of the slaughterhouse. There is a gentle sincerity to this action which prevents the work from becoming twee or humorous, while at the same time retaining a dark honesty in terms of the human imagery associated with such memorials. 

 

The interchangeable relationship between our significance and insignificance on this planet remains at the forefront of my work and motivates me to recognise the subtlety and fragility of existence. This is achieved through amplifying, distorting and subverting personal idiosyncrasies into poetic commentaries.

For The Animals
Installation, Fake, dried and fresh flowers.
To The Animals
Film, 7minutes29seconds
(C) Toby Oliver Dean 2011

All images with thanks to Siobhan Belingy.

For The Animals

1.Great Beast Pin - Occulter 2. Todd Selby Swim Shorts - Topman 3. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - Dazed&Confused June 2011 4. Pure Evil Pandas Rock! Crew with Balaclava 3 - Sibling London 

5. Rose, Lavender and Rosemary - Jam Jar Flowers 6. Film Still, To The Animals - Toby Oliver Dean 

7. Rriot Grrl Shrine - Meadham Kirchhoff 8. Submitted By Cheryl - Animals With Stuffed Animals  

9. Why look At Animals? - John Berger

This life.

Via Animals with stuffed animals. It will melt your heart, and your face.

Unable to love each other, the English turn naturally to dogs.

Yesterday was truly beautiful, wasn't it?
Maybe I need to sort my priorities out, but there were so many nice dogs around yesterday. I wish Id taken a better picture of the one the woman is holding, it looked sort of like a giant guinea pig!! So nice!!

Speaking of dogs, I watched a most wonderful film today - My Dog Tulip, based on the writings of J R Ackerley. What a wonderful story, completey perfectly fitting in with everything I am working on at the moment, a story of friendship, love and loss, as well as a strange and beautiful outlook on the world through the eyes of man and dog. So lovely. And funny. And gross. And really great animation too.

EAT SHIT!

Part of my museum intervention at The Museum of English Rural Life. It's on til Friday, and I'll take some more pictures of it soon. This is the colouring page which was designed to look the same as the museum's existing ones. I was interested to see how people would react to the obviously subversive tone of the work. They mainly reacted like this:

EAT YR MEAT
Museum intervention: Opinion wall and colouring page.
The work is a response to the comment wall at the end of the museum, evoked by the opinions of the public and in return provoking a response. I am interested in the way humans percieve the animals we share the planet with, and the ways in which we act out dominion. We love animals, we need animals, we hate animals, we eat animals.
To see how visitors will react to this confrontation is just as much a part of the work as the pieces themselves.

Why Look at Animals?

For the presentation of the pre-fall collection, Lanvin has released  THIS set of images, all featuring taxidermy animals alongside the models.

Im having a hard time forming an opinion of this shit in my brains. I have to say first of all that Im reeeally not diggin' like 75% of the collection in terms of styling and the actual pieces themselves. There seem to be lots of ill fitting shoes, and also just plain ugly shoes, and also what the fuck is that gross grey beanie shit??? OK there are also really lovely pieces - I particuarly enjoy the ruffle collar and the wine coloured wool coat, but mainly it looks tacky, deffo not the Lanvin elegance I am used to.
OK, so the animals. Its deffo not the first time that Lanvin has used animals in its promotion - the Fall 09 campaign with the cats remains actually one of my favourite campains ever... the look on the cats face is just actually priceless. For me however, I am not convinved by the inclusion of the animals for this lookbook. They are static and dead, and if anything they are a negative feature - how can you attempt to sell an exotic fur coat while standing next to a carcass?
So you see how Im mixed up? I have quite a large collection of taxidermy which I use in my artistic practice and always find aesthetically pleasing and always apreciate the use of it, particuarly in fashion stories. But for me this falls short. I have learnt in my explorations of the medium, and also from alot of research and stuff Ive been working on recently, all of it based on animals, that you really need to have a respect and understanding for the animal before just using it. Like it feels too PROP based, yknow.... Like they think they can take the vast beauty of nature and it will transfer into the garments? I actually dont know. I mean part of me still actually really likes it. I mean animals are the best. WOW, I RAMBLE. Heres the pix.

Tell me your opinions?? Tell me Im not going TOO insane? Tell me to stop writing because I'm bad at it?

They Are the Last

For Beverly

Behind her tongue

with its language of grass

and passion for salt,

behind the heavy tongue

deft nevertheless

as a blind man's hand,

a cow in good health chews

approximately fifty times

before reswallowing the cud.

It appears the animals

Beverly

are emigrating: their America

the constellations in the sky

Lizard, Lion, Great Bear,

Ram, Bull, Crow,

Hare . . .

perhaps the more prudent

like the agouti

have chosen the milky way.

Put your ear to her flank

and you will hear

the tide of her four stomachs.

Her second, like a net,

has the name of a constellation:

Reticulum. Her third,

the Psalterium, is like

the pages of a book.

When she falls sick

and lacks the will to chew

her four stomachs fall

silent as a hive in winter.

Each year more animals depart.

Only pets and carcasses remain,

and the carcasses living or dead

are from birth

ineluctably and invisibly

turned into meat.

'I believe it's completely feasible,'

said Bob Rust

of Iowa State University,

'to specifically design 

an animal for hamburger.'

Elsewhere 

the animals of the poor

die with the poor

from protein insufficiency.

When fetched from the pastures

they bring into the cool stable

the heat of the orchard

and the hot breath of wild garlic.

To clean out the cowshed

scatter a little of

the mare's dung

it absorbs their shit

liquid as springtime

and green with grass.

And fasten them well tonight

bed them with beech leaves

Beverly

they are the last.

Now that they have gone

it is their endurance we miss.

Unlike the tree

the river or the cloud

the animals had eyes

and in their glance

was permenance.

It was the same fox for ever and ever.

To kill him

was to drag him

momentarily

from the earth

of his eternity.

Once flies and crows

when devouring the dead sheep

began with the eyes.

Yet the ewe

had already lambed

her permenance.

The buzzard circled

biding his everlasting time

as repeatedly

as the mountain.

Out of the single night

came the day's look,

the wary glance

on every side.

Once the animals flowed like their milk.

Now they have gone

it is their endurance we miss.

*

'The breeding sow,' it is said,

'should be thought of and treated

as a valuable piece of machinery

whose function

is to pump out baby pigs.'

*

Sometimes still,

when you are pouring

from the white jug,

the milk

reminds me of the geese

who like dogs

guarded the house.

John Berger, 2001.