- Venue
- Meter Room Gallery
- Starts
- Friday, October 28, 2011
- Ends
- Sunday, November 27, 2011
- Address
- Meter Room project space & studios, 58-64 Corporation St, Coventry, CV11GF
- Location
- West Midlands
“ZOO”Mike Bartlett, Anton Goldenstein, Cathy Lomax, Stephanie Quayle, Alli Sharma‘Everywhere animals disappear. In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance.’ John Berger “Why Look At Animals?” Stuck in an uncomfortable axis between enforced captivity and the assumed need to preserve endangered species, the zoo is a problematic, almost obscene site that somehow does not fit with a century exploding with an ever-increasing call for human rights. Tainted with the whiff of colonialism and great white hunters, these melancholy menageries continue to exist. The archetypal of all collections is Noah’s Ark and this template led the way for menageries of exotic animals, collected by wealthy people throughout history, as animals simultaneously disappeared from daily life. Collecting is an activity that allows for a certain amount of control and repositioning of the past, telling the story that the creator wants to be told.
