Past Exhibition

Found Wanting

Betty Spackman
Jan 27, 2011
to
Mar 27, 2011
EXHIBITION
Installation view of Found Wanting.

As an artist and as storyteller I am caught somewhere between actual, real objects and the stories connected to them.

The bones I have used in this work, which were found or given to me, are real and are mostly from domestic animals we consume as ‘meat’ without thinking about them as ‘animals’. Though I believe all of creation is sacred and to be respected, these remains are not meant as fetishes of any kind. They are simply scavenged fragments – the evidence of death for the task of remembering life. My basic intent is to honour them and in so doing to acknowledge that, as a consumer, I have benefited from their demise. I am also implicated, as a consumer, in the mismanagement, poor stewardship and lack of care concerning the animals they represent. I have been drinking the milk and eating the eggs and wearing the skins and digesting the flesh of animals all my life. I use the bones and other animal remains in Found Wanting as a ‘reality check’ against my ingratitude and to remind myself that there is never a feast without a sacrifice.

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