Been fascinated by Julia deVille lately. She is an New Zealand artist who mixes taxidermy with sculpture, creates pieces that evoke questions about life, death and the rights of animals. I find the mixture between the questions of life and death posed in taxidermy as an art form also relates to the theories of animation. That animation at its core gives the illusion of life through a sequence of otherwise still or inanimate objects; bringing what is dead to life.
I first found deVille's work at Mona, through "kitten trophy rug". I have to say this piece was one of the ones that stood out to me at Mona - mostly because I disliked it a lot at first. There wasn't much information available and I was struggling with the meaning behind it.
Well after doing some research into deVille's work it hit me.. It was suppose to be reactionary work. Skin rugs are something someone would probably glance at and not think about it much, say if it was a bear of a big cat. But using a kitten evokes something more personal; and a connection to cats we may have relationships with now or when we were younger. It's uncomfortable to look at because of this but I understand the meaning behind he work and it's purpose. She used a stillborn kitten for this work, and has given it further purpose in a form that is thought provoking. DeVille often tackles pretty big issues in her work that relate to animal rights and her work is often a complete contrast to the other side of taxidermy - trophy hunting and disrespecting an animal's body once it's passed.
I think if I was to expand upon my current ideas and create future projects I would attempt to incorporate taxidermy animals that have died of natural causes into my animations. I think it would be very interesting to animate skeletons or full fleshed animals. I have been searching for animations that use taxidermy animals but I'm not really having any luck.
I did discover that the original King Kong from the 1933 movie was a taxidermy gorilla. Though when I think about how they obtained the body I loose some respect for it. Apparently they used some sort of bacteria on the inner skin to soften it so it was easier to animate. Somewhat disturbing and fascinating. There's probably other movies from this era or later on that used real animals for their puppets, perhaps i'll discover more in the future and I can possibly learn how to do it myself one day.
