Ten Years Hunting - [Part Three]: The Trophy Room

Ten Years Hunting - [The Trophy Room]

Fayçal Baghriche, Mike Ballou, Jean Bellissen, Vincent Bizien, John Bjerklie, Matt Blackwell, Willard Boepple, France Cadet, Denis Castellas, Roland Cognet, Lana Crooks, Gregory Curry, Rachel Denny, Jacques Flèchemuller, Gregory Forstner, Matt Freedman, Jeff Gabel, Ted Gahl, Carla Gannis, Charo Garaigorta, Clare Gasson, Jason Glasser, Barry Hylton, Tom Kotik, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Charles Krafft, David Kramer, Peter Krashes, Larry Krone, Fay Ku, Nickolas Lascot, Nevan Lahart, Gereon Lepper, Claire Lieberman, Patrick Martinez, Caroline McCarthy, David McQueen, Myriam Mechita, Kenn Munk, Kurt Novak, Graham Parker, William Powhida, Ravi Rajakumar, Tere Recarens, Sylvie Réno, John Roach, Béatrice Roué, Sergio Roger, Mike Rogers, Hervé di Rosa, David Rothenberg, Samuel Rousseau, Casey Ruble, Ward Shelley, Michael Sheridan Smith, Tim Spelios, Jacob Stein, Joshua Stern, Justin Storms, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Patricia Waller, Susan Wanklyn, Emily Warren, Gerard Williams

May 28 - 30, 2010
And through June 27, 2010 in the Showroom

Celebrating our tenth anniversary, Parker’s Box is delighted to announce the final exhibition of the three part series Ten Years Hunting.

Even before passing through the highly unpredictable mill of transformation that is the contemporary artist’s mind, the hunting trophy is one of the most eccentric of artifacts. In its simplest and most traditional incarnation, the head of a wild animal killed by a hunter, is stuffed and mounted on a shield as a celebration of the hunter’s prowess. On the one hand this age-old tradition, recording an activity with an "aesthetically" presented fragment of itself, could be seen to be close to certain conceptual art practices. On the other hand, preserving bits of dead animals, generally with their eyes fixed wide open in a parody of life, might seem to many to be quite a gruesome, even twisted activity that has little place in today’s supposedly eco-friendly context. This dichotomy made it seem to be of particular interest as a theme to throw out for artists to gnaw on. At the same time, it somehow also seemed to correspond to the attempts made by Parker’s Box since opening in the late Spring of 2000, to hunt down and exhibit challenging and inventive art-work that would hopefully surprise, delight and stimulate the spectator

With work by over sixty artists included, there is inevitably a wide and exciting array of propositions. Only one actual taxidermy deer-head managed to slip in through the back door, in a work by David McQueen who has lovingly closed the animal’s eyes, finally giving it an air of peaceful sleep. Several artists have of course represented animal heads in various materials, from wonderful knitted deer (Rachel Denny, Patricia Waller), to a porcelain smoking rabbit (Charles Krafft), an interactive leopard (France Cadet), a pearly wild boar (Myriam Mechita), a surveillance camera pig (Ward Shelley), paper skulls (Kenn Munk), an almost abstract fabric ram (Sergio Roger) and a papier maché deer (Emily Warren) to name just a few.

One of the starting points of the whole project was the fabric head of a hard to identify animal by Béatrice Roué, with buttons for its eyes and nostrils, and twigs for antlers/horns, discovered overlooking chicken sales in rural Brittany! A number of artists such as Ted Gahl and Gregory Curry, have used the wall-mounted trophy shield, often in varnished wood, as the common denominator for less obvious interpretations, other examples being Michael Sheridan Smith’s portrait of his father, Maarten Vanden Eynde’s gnarled pieces of branch, Samuel Rousseau’s half bicycle, Caroline McCarthy’s "Anytime Breakfast" packaging, or Nevan Lahart’s gloved hand begging with a paper coffee cup.

Other artists have opted for the subtler evocation of a more formal, sculptural approach (Denis Castellas, Roland Cognet, Willard Boepple, Jason Glasser, Agnieszka Kalinowska, Claire Lieberman), or a mythical/ sci-fi atmosphere (Vincent Bizien, Charo Garaigorta) while yet others have opted for more conceptual criteria, like Fayçal Bagriche who asked his picture framer to keep and frame any rare pieces of flawed glass he found, or Gerard Williams who asked a National Shooting Champion to shoot at postage stamps depicting animal heads using the appropriate weapon for the animal shown…

Other interpretations recur also, like the works dealing with notions of the Trophy Wife, particularly in a number of two-dimensional works (David Kramer, Carla Gannis, Gereon Lepper, Gregory Forstner).

With close to seventy works in the show, only half of the participants’ work has been mentioned here. All of the works exhibited seem necessarily to operate on multiple levels, both as a response to a theme (whether the work was made specifically for the show or not) and to the similar and contrasting questions each work poses to those around it.

Since its launch in 2000, Parker’s Box has always sought to act as a catalyst, offering a platform for innovative and inventive practices, and at the same time attempting to engage with the wider public and art world community. The rich dialogue between the works presented in "Trophy Room" together constitute an installation piece that encapsulates the continuing desire of Parker’s Box to engage with exciting contemporary art practices both as a facilitator and as a participant in the process of art making and presentation, with as deep an involvement as the artists themselves.