NOTE: THIS ARTIST'S BOOK IS HELD IN BALTIC ARCHIVE NOT THE LIBRARY. Please email archive@balticmill.com for an appointment or see staff.
This is a collection of 20 boxed prints relating to the 2015 BALTIC-commissioned exhibtion Depot by Fiona Tan.
Depot, so named to reflect Tan’s ongoing interest in public and private collections of objects, was a film installation incorporating footage filmed in the depots of natural history museums in Leiden and Berlin. The amassing of specimens in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the basis for most natural history museums. However, ‘natural history’ remains a curious term, an oxymoron. This term encapsulates the troubled complexities of mankind’s relationship to the natural world. Ironically, when it comes to collecting for these institutions, one must first kill and render lifeless that which one wishes to preserve. This recent commission builds upon several of Tan’s recent works that expose collections and archives, calling into question the ways in which they are used to represent and interpret history and mankind’s place in the world. |