Specimen II

Specimen is a  series of photopolymer etchings. I explored the fascinating history behind collecting, studying, and displaying ‘wet specimens’ after discovering a set on display in a museum in France. Back home in Bristol I contacted Bristol Museums and Galleries who were kind enough to let me into their archives and study their wet specimens.  Up close, suspended in time, these specimens offer an intimate, almost voyeuristic glimpse into the workings of these creatures.

My art practice often explores the gaze, who is looking at an artwork, where and when. The intimacy between the viewer and the artwork is different every time, each has their own unique relationship. In the Specimens series I focused on the way that specimens are there for us to look at, to study close up, to use to further our knowledge of the world.

I have taken my original images and reworked them into a round, reminiscence of the eyeball, to emphasise the sense of looking intensely. The etchings are deliberately dark, in shadow, so the viewer is pulled close, encouraged to really look hard to see what is there, much like these specimens would they been viewed by so many over the years in museums and l laboratories.

Unlike taxidermy, wet specimens preserve the whole body. The process was developed to preserve bodies for medical research in the days before refrigeration. Frederik Ruysch was a pioneer in this field in the 1600’s. Modern research uses wet specimens to track changes in our environment and ecosystem, to preserve examples of species that have become extinct, teach us about endangered animals and how species are evolving. DNA sequencing can be carried out on wet specimens, which can help us understand how to enable these animals to survive.