| Susannah is a film maker currently working in ‘fine art’ taxidermy. In her own words, she is "preserving and arranging animal & bird skins and exploring the craft of taxidermy whilst re-contextualising the traditional focus. Traditional taxidermy attempts to preserve the image or essence of life in an animal. In my work I present the dead. I don’t believe this is a morbid fascination with death, more a fascination with the material – mammalian skin & bone – the material we are made of. The process always involves an incredibly intimate biological investigation. I see what I do as working with recycled material. My sources are road kill and the bi-product of the food chain. There is great potency in the raw material itself and this takes precedent in the work. When working with farmed deer I cannot help but invite people to consider the reality of the process which feeds them. Many people are drawn to keep preserved remains, sometimes as relics, or at least a piece of nature, such as taking a pebble from a beach or a leaf skeleton from a walk as a momento. I’m not sure if the preserved skin carries the spirit of the dead animal or presents the stark reality of death but perhaps like many tribal cultures, if a creature is to die I would like to see the whole of its body used. Or perhaps more generally, why throw something away when you could make art out of it…? We might learn something."
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