A sunlit summer room. Light streams on glass cases as the removers in overalls tape the head, neck and torso of a a horse skeleton.

Brown boxes, mothballs, freeze dried animal sections inside. numbered and placed into steel packing cages.

In the midst of this disappearing menagerie there was the sense of life leaving. A memento mori. in fact the image of the dissecting room is a type of memento mori. Life persists among remains. Life in bones, formaldehyde, in books in the steel dissecting-tables.

Making of Ars Animlis there was the same consideration. To create an installation both mortal and immortal. Of inside and Outside. Anatomy and World. The unity of opposites. The Zen sign Enso O seemed apposite in this respect. It seemed to fit perfectly as a unifying principle.

Enso has no fixed meaning. Its meaning is manifold, strength, enlightenment, harmony, elegance, and the universe. Many of the qualities that occur naturally in the animal world.

I applied it the Pigs and the Hare firstly as an experiment. Then realised fairly quickly that it was a case of “first idea, best idea”. It seemed the bridge between the animal and human world. Between the ideas of Inside and Outside. Between art and life.

There is a wonder and a fear in visioning both inside and outside the body. This revelation is de facto, the continuity of the quotidian life-cycle. Yet is something we rarely, if ever, consider, believing solely in the outer shell.

Ars Animalis offers the chance to view both parts simultaneously.

Bernard Rudden is a filmmaker, photographer and artist. His work includes Hunger Artist, Daybreak, Soul Train and many others. His photographic work can be seen at www.bernardrudden.com 

A simple, quietly provocative piece that questions our role as observer and the relationship we have with the person we meet on screen. The Soldier’s Song was originally commissioned by Leeds Studio Met with support from the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster. Additional material developed with support from Fierce Festival.

Funded by Arts Council England.

Stephanie Richardson was born in 1989 in Yorkshire and currently lives and works in Edinburgh. She graduated from the Painting department of Edinburgh College of Art in 2011 where she was awarded an Andrew Grant Bequest. She has recently exhibited at The WOT Gallery, Edinburgh and as part of the Hunted Projects artistic platform.

Richardson’s practice is framed by the engineering of curious or uneasy new evolutions of beings through simple interventions into found objects in which the indexical root becomes disfigured. Interlacing sculpture, drawing and collage to compose anxious geographies, her work encloses a fascination with symbiotic forms and clandestine engagements between species.

ECA graduate Clare Flatley has been invited to exhibit her work ‘The Black Gates’ as part of the Summerhall Programme 2011.

‘My degree show piece demonstrates my explorations into the absorbent and reflective qualities of surfaces, particularly the immersive power and apparent depth of a black surface. My aim was to create a passing point that provides an immersive experience for the viewer, but that does not physically lead to a different space. The framework of the doorway is based on the Gates of Paradise in Florence, with the panels depicting an abstract, chaotic, folded texture rather than pictorial reliefs. It stems from my interest in the way in which science and history bring clarity and definition to the apparent chaos of the world around us. And the subjective, fluid
and ever-changing nature of this ‘truth’ based on the individuality of our own perspective.’

Clare Flatley 2011

Parallel Lines has previously been shown at Arches Live and IETM in Glasgow, and the Different Sensations theatre festival in Italy. It is being staged at Summerhall in partnership with (g)Host City, Edinburgh’s virtual festival.

The (g)HostCityprogramme includes Parallel Lines, an installation at Summerhall whose story continues with audio journeys and treasure hunts around the city.