After a little delay due to Covid-19 … our work feeler traveled to Koln and was successfully installed as part of Octopus Encounters: An Immersive Library of Octopus Aesthetics. The exhibition is on till November. A virtual conference Other Worlds – Octopus in Interdisciplinary Perspectives will be held on 30-31st October. Hosted by the University of Kassel and GLASMOOG See: www.okto-lab.org for updates and to register for the conference.
Photos below: Courtesy of Heike Pfohl, GLASMOOG
At this point (pre-Covid19) Bruce and I would be in Germany installing the work feeler as part of the OktoLab exhibition. Like with many exhibitions – this show was postponed, but it will hopefully re-emerge if the world comes out of lockdown.
Nevertheless it’s a good time to post some wonderful pictures we got from Plimsoll Gallery by the photographer Remi Chauvin:
Okto-lab and our work feeler made it onto Channel 7’s Nightly News –
If you are interested we feature at 8.20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1zwIDwxEC8
Just installed feeler a mOwson&M0wson collaborative work as part of the Okto-lab exhibition at Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart. This work will also travel to Cologne in 2020.
I’ve just realised I’ve never posted the images of the speaking meat artworks that were used in the exhibition Why Listen to Animals? So here they are. These fleshlumps each housed a bluetooth speaker – so they could ‘speak’ as they were handed around the audience (imagine a butchers shop dialogue between meats).
In this performance there were three different ‘voices’ and characters for the meat lumps:
grumpy steak – voiced by Bruce (grumpy steak is going off, he is the voice of the master narrative, and he’s happy he’s a steak (top of the ladder meat) and wants to ‘rest’ (like meat does), he calls daisy dog food, and tells them to shut up – he’s the heavy breather.
Worked up some new textures for the second casting. Now starting to get a sense of the possible multitude of arms/tentacles. See my instagram for test images of the tentacles with disco fairy lights inside!
Exciting day – first cast off the new 150cm mould. I loved how the inverted cast looked like a mini-boobscape, it’s fantastic when the work has resonances with previous works. The cast was easily demoulded with just a little split at the base, and at 150cm has quite a presence. The texture is subtle and yet evocative. Now time to start making more – it takes a minimum of a week to make a cast, and each will be individualised along the way. Hoping to amass a large number of them to play around with install possibilities.
Over the last hot week or so I’ve made up the large (150cm) and small (50cm) Plasticine moulds – now to start painting on the latex layers for the casts. Reading ‘The Case Against Octopus Farming’ and watching videos of people drying octopus in the sun … despite, or because of, the wonderful things I have been reading about octopuses – I have ended up looking at how we exploit, use and consume these wonderful animals.
I’ve been working on some testers for OktoLab recently, and I’m now ready to make the moulds for this project. Key themes are emerging regarding the peculiarities of Octopus breeding, ‘motherhood’ and current attempts to factory farm octopuses. At this stage I’m envisaging an installation that includes a multiplicity of tentacles and eggs – but things might change as I produce the final casts.
