Making history of science
Am I glad that I made it to the Wellcome last Sunday! I'm sorry to say that, if you've missed their recent show Making Nature, you've missed a corker. It was one of the best things that I've seen in ages.
One of the core principles of my PhD discipline - history of science - is that science is socially constructed. The idea of scientific fact, our understanding of scientific practice, product and argument is all contingent on cultural, social, economic and political factors. What is most interesting to me, is the roles that visual and material elements play in the story.
This can be a difficult message to get across, but I was supremely impressed with how Making Nature did so, with both style and substance. Divided into four sections on Ordering, Displaying, Observing and Making, the exhibition looks at 'how we see animals'. It makes the crucial point that human understanding of the natural world, and of man's role in and relationship to it, is constructed by how we think about it. Taxonomies, illustrations, collections, zoos, documentaries, and genetic experiments all play a part in this, as we demarcate good and bad, useful and useless, pretty and ugly, human and non-human nature.
As always, the exhibition also told its story with an impressive dose of design and contemporary art. In 'Displaying' a mirrored wall, made you very aware of your own human body against the man-made taxidermy animals. In 'Observing' you stepped into a large chipboard box, as if entering a crate to be taken to the zoo. 'Making' was possibly most thought-provoking. Selected by the Centre for PostNatural History, this looked out how humans have physically changed animals, from selective breeding to genetic manipulation, via recorded birdsong.
Scattered throughout the show were contemporary artworks that brought a fresh, and refreshing perspective. In ‘Displaying’, a photograph of a diorama by Hiroshi Sugimoto removes all sense of glass and framing case to make you question what you're seeing. In 'Ordering', Allora and Calzadilla's film piece The Great Silence puts footage of parrots against the Arecibo Observatory, highlighting what we categorise as human communication.
Most strikingly, throughout the show, taxidermy pieces by Jazmine Miles-Long lie in corners or under cases. Some are curled up, some look damaged and winded. Unobtrusive, almost missable and without labels, these might be creatures that have crept into the Wellcome on their own. Instead they are pieces lovingly made by a human, part of the current growing fashion for taxidermy.
The next stage of this exhibition, A Museum of Modern Nature, opens on June 22nd and has been curated including objects brought in by the public, to show our relationships with nature. Another layer to this fascinating story.