Susannah is a film maker currently working in ‘fine art’ taxidermy. She began her residency at Bank Street in 2009 using the cellar spaces to create a reinstallation of previous work and to begin the process of thinking about new work, in particular the fusing of her work in film with her art practice using taxidermy.
In the first stage of Susannah’s residency she explored the subterranean environment of the cellar spaces, combining sculptures and lighting effects to create atmospheric and slightly unnerving installations in the barrel vaulted spaces.
This was followed in 2010 by a continuation of her residency in which Susannah used the empty studio space in the basement to make a complete new series of work based around the deer head, which was exhibited alongside new installation in the cellar in the Spring of 2010.
In her own words, Susannah is “preserving and arranging animal & bird skins and exploring the craft of taxidermy whilst re-contextualising the traditional focus. Traditional taxidermy attempts to preserve the image or essence of life in an animal. In my work I present the dead. I don’t believe this is a morbid fascination with death, more a fascination with the material – mammalian skin & bone – the material we are made of. The process always involves an incredibly intimate biological investigation. I see what I do as working with recycled material. My sources are road kill and the bi-product of the food chain. There is great potency in the raw material itself and this takes precedent in the work. When working with farmed deer I cannot help but invite people to consider the reality of the process which feeds them. Many people are drawn to keep preserved remains, sometimes as relics, or at least a piece of nature, such as taking a pebble from a beach or a leaf skeleton from a walk as a momento. I’m not sure if the preserved skin carries the spirit of the dead animal or presents the stark reality of death but perhaps like many tribal cultures, if a creature is to die I would like to see the whole of its body used. Or perhaps more generally, why throw something away when you could make art out of it…? We might learn something.”
