Justin Spiers + Jonathan W. Marshall Meat Fence Perth Centre for Photography 14 February - 31 March 2014

Meat Fence is a collaboration between photographer Justin Spiers and author/critic Jonathan W. Marshall. The exhibition consists of a series of images of pig hides draped on fences taken from a location in South Island, New Zealand.

The work speaks to the history of land use, visual representations of the landscape, and our relation to domestic and wild animals within the postcolonial, agricultural setting.

Context & Conceptualisation:- A few kilometres out of the Otago mining town of Macrae’s Flat, in South Island New Zealand, passers-by encounter a rare spectacle: nearly two kilometres of pig’s skins and heads hung along a barbed wire fence which runs beside the road. The striking, brutal simplicity of this unique lay-person’s art-installation contrasts starkly with the nearby public art-works which were commissioned in 2008 by the OceanaGold company, as part of a proposed (and now abandoned) sculpture park.

In a literally visceral fashion, these alternative, porcine sculptures relate directly to the landscape and to the extraction processes which have long characterised the area. This is a place of gold, of farming, of stone-quarrying, of meat production, and above all, of hunting—be it for pig, for deer, or for other resources which crawl upon, or within, the dirt.

The struggle for natural resources continues to affect representations of the landscape in such agricultural or mineral extraction locales as West Australia and New Zealand. The photographic series Meat Fence constitutes a visual meditation upon, and mediation of, this local piece of contemporary Art brut, and of those emotional, representational and conceptual themes which this suggestive monument solicits in the viewer.

Skin merges with vegetation as wind-dried lichen slowly creeps across the blistering hide. A vacant skull gapes wide to mouth a fence post, whilst indistinct boundaries of light and shade blend these forms together beneath the dour, Otago sky. The animal, so often represented as a cipher of the human (we are what the animal is not) here becomes the ultimate memento mori. Animality becomes a sign of our own proximity to the state of meat, to decay, and of our ultimate annihilation, which the strangely calm, eyeless gaze of the deceased hog seems to accept. Fears and hungers grow out of these images, and the viewer is forced to examine his or her complicity with the frightful beauty of human extraction processes, here displayed in an unadorned form.

About the Artists:- Justin Spiers is a Dunedin-based photographer who works across diverse contexts ranging from Australia and New Zealand, to China. Half of the award-winning team behind Pet Photo Booth (http://www.petphotobooth.com), Spiers’ photography has explored aspects of landscape, place and home, as well as human/animal relationships, including a series of images taken in zoological parks across the world. In these and other images, the animal itself is not revealed, but rather lurks behind a veil: an indistinct, shadowy, often theatrical presence, whose inward being (if an animal may be said to have such a thing) remains obscure. Meat Fence expands on these themes, placing the animal firmly in the context of the Southern New Zealand landscape, and the unforgiving forces which define this region.

The exhibition is the product of a collaboration between Spiers and author/critic, Dr Jonathan W. Marshall. Trained in the disciplines of historical scholarship and the arts, Marshall lectures in Theatre and Performing Arts Studies at the University of Otago. He has published on the landscape photography of Edward Burtynsky (Double Dialogues, 2011), the dance photography of Lois Greenfield (About Performance, 2008), on Pet Photo Booth (JAC, 2010), and regularly presents public lectures on topics in art history and contemporary art (e.g. Wedemeyer’s Fourth Wall, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2012; Roger Kemp and Joseph Beuys at the National Gallery of Victoria, 2007; see http://otago.academia.edu/JonathanWMarshall). “in the name of what—except perhaps rarity—does man adorn himself with necklaces of shells, and with not spider’s webs; with fox fur, and not fox innards? … Don’t dirt, trash and filth, which are man’s companions during his whole lifetime, deserve to be dearer to him, and isn’t it serving him well to remind him of their beauty?” —Jean Dubuffet, founder of Art Brut, 1946 Perth Centre for Photography 100 Aberdeen Street Northbridge, WA 6865 (e) info@pcp.org.au Ph: +61 (08) 9328 1728 Thur + Fri 12pm - 5pm Sat + Sun 12pm - 4pm 14 February - 31 March 2014

For more information, interviews, images, etc, pls contact:- jonathan.marshall@otago.ac.nz justin.spiers@gmail.com