Interspecies An Arts Catalyst touring exhibition Private View Jan 23rd

Cornerhouse, Manchester, 24 January – 29 March 2009 Private view: 6pm Friday 23 January 2009
Touring throughout 2009-2011 to:Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland, GSK Contemporary, London,Edinburgh Science Festival/Stills Gallery, Edinburgh Admission free
Can artists work with animals as equals? It has recently been discovered that humans are closer to the higher primates than was previously thought. This exhibition, organised by The Arts Catalyst on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth brings together a group of artists who actively question the sovereignty of the human species over the all other animal species. Interspecies opens at Cornerhouse in Manchester in January 2009, and then travels to Northumberland, London and Edinburgh.
www.artscatalyst.org www.cornerhouse.org

Four artists have been commissioned to develop projects with non-human animals.

- Kira O’Reilly, one of the most experimental and controversial performance artists in the UK, presents an action/installed performance featuring herself and a sleeping female pig. The work addresses the ethics of human and non-human animal interaction, acknowledging the implicit ambivalences and violence in the appropriation of animals as a resource.

- Nicolas Primat is working with primatologists and zoos to make a new work in which higher apes are taught video skills. The apes make the creative decisions, with humans simply providing guidance and training. Primat’s work explores how the animals’ ‘natural’ communication skills can be extended into the realm of human/ape creative collaboration.

- Antony Hall encourages the public to directly communicate with live electric fish in the gallery space, through mild electrical impulses (both tactile and visual). The artist’s motivation for this project relates to his long term interest in aquariums. Typically installed as calming objects, on closer inspection they are revealed as contained environments of both aggressive conflict and submissive tolerance.

- The Department of Eagles (Ruth Maclennan) is producing a participatory project, examining the communications between falconers and falcons. For centuries, these birds have served to naturalise human surveillance. Arguably, their existence only continues today through human intervention such as tagging, breeding programmes, and the construction of artificial nesting environments.

Two existing works will also be shown in the touring exhibition: Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema, which casts human actors in the roles of mating non-human primates, Beatriz Da Costa’s PigeonBlog which investigates the military use of homing pigeons. And a new work by Kathy High, based on her Embracing Animal, project which explores the relationship between humans and laboratory rats, is planned for GSK Contemporary in London.

All the artists in Interspecies question the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They instead try to absorb the animal’s point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice.

Interspecies tours during the Darwin 200 celebrations in 2009. 12 February 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. Interspecies will open at Cornerhouse in Manchester in January 2009, and then travel to Northumberland, London and Edinburgh. A series of talks and debates between the artists, writers, scientists and animal welfare experts will accompany the exhibition.

Accompanying Interspecies will be a series of talks and debates between the artists, writers, scientists and animal welfare experts.

The Arts Catalyst is a London-based arts organisation that commissions new art which experimentally and critically engages with science. It produces provocative, playful, risk-taking projects that aim to spark meaningful conversations about our changing world. www.artscatalyst.org

Listings details for Cornerhouse:Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5HN
www.cornerhouse.org