History part 5: A Minor Collection of Unnatural History

2007's show was A Minor Collection of Unnatural History at Off the Kerb gallery in Collingwood.

It was based on the natural history section of a museum, where you walk in and are presented with say a little display of a possum, which consists of a drawing of a possum, a photograph of it in it's natural environment, a little paragraph about it and a taxidermied possum. I wanted this experience but with monsters. But not the monsters everyone knows, dracula, werewolves ect, everyone knows about those kind of monsters. I was interested in 'previously undiscovered' monsters. Myself and graphic artist Benj Dawe came up with 15 new monsters each, he drew his and I built mine in photoshop. We then swapped and created eachother's in our seperate media. So then we had 30 monsters with names and stories. I then contacted a number of artists to build the monsters in sculpture.

I wasn't interested in the artists using the images we'd created as blueprints, if I'd wanted monsters exactly as the images descibed I would have built them myself. Instead, I wanted the artists to use the images and stories as a launching place for them to then make the monsters their own.

While the artists were out building their monsters, Ben and I worked on making the images and stories into a book that we'd then sell at the show as well. We were fond of all the monsters, and we wanted them all to have a presence in the show wether they were chosen by the artists or not.

We had decided on 15 monsters on display for the show, so we needed 15 artists. Unnatural History had the largest drop out rate of any of the shows. That was quite stressful, because we needed the specific quote of artists to make the show work. So each time an artist dropped out, I had to replace them. As it was, 2 of the confirmed artists didn't turn up with work, so I printed up 2 little cards that read "The museum regrets to inform it's patrons that this monster has escaped" It was the right solution, I couldn't remove two of the monsters from the already sparce show because two of the artists didn't make it.

The sparcity of the show was a deliberate decision. Unlike Dead Bugs or Dirty Wonderland which were both packed to the gills, a museum is laid out with less exhibits, and I wanted that experience for the audience.

Images of the show can be found at www.omnificassembly.com/oa/unnatural.html

For the opening, I asked Ben Mckenzie
Melbourne comedian and scientician to do it. He'd done a fantastic job at Dead Bugs, and he didn't disapoint. For Unnatual Histroy, he spoke about the science of cryptozoology, which is the study of monsters. We also had wine and monster cupcakes, a number of artists made cupcakes with monsters on them. They were very cute and a huge hit. They were all gone by halfway through. we sold a number of books and a number of the artworks, which always makes you feel good when you leave.