"ANIMAL" September to December, 2011 Kenderdine Art Gallery, Saskatoon

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"Crow(d)"

An Whitlock, "Crow(d)" plaster, 2000 to 2010.

ANIMAL, September to December, Kenderdine Art Gallery, Saskatoon

BY: Jill Sawyer

In Su Rynard’s installation work, Bear, the starved-looking form of a young black bear hesitates on the edge between wilderness and civilization, drawn out of the forest by a scattering of garbage. Stills from Kenn Bass’s video projection, Fugue, show the glare of a coyote as it runs past the camera, ears flattened back. This show, Animal, at the University of Saskatchewan’s Kenderdine Art Gallery, is a representation of wild animals as they exist within human consciousness, almost occupying a physical space between wild and civilized. Organized by Museum London and including work by Arnaud Maggs, John McEwen, Lyndal Osborne, An Whitlock, Rebecca Diederichs, Tom Dean, Dagmar Dahle, and Lois Andison, the show has elements of the sheer will of survival that exists in the wild. Dahle’s work touches on extinctions, crafted representations of natural forms, and the idea that humans can subsume the natural world into decorative objects, bringing them across the divide and into our homes. Animal, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi, demonstrates the close, but not entirely understood, relationship between human and non-human animals.