MICHAEL REID SYDNEY
BERLIN
MURRURUNDI
JOSEPH MCGLENNON Thylacine 1936
Giclee digital prints on archival Hahnemuhle Fine Art paper 100cm x 120cm Edition of 8 & 2 Artist Proofs One "Hero" image of the above at 150cm x 170cm Michael Reid Sydney 44 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, NSW 2011 +61 2 8353 3500 Gallery Hours 11am-5pm, Tuesday to Saturday www.michaelreid.com.au MIchael Reid Berlin Ackerstrasse 163 D-10115 Berlin, Germany Gallery Hours 11am-6pm,Tuesday to Saturday infoberlin@michaelreid.com.au +49 (0) 175 6265 100
Photographed on location in Van Diemans Land
TASMANIA’S TIGER It was a very cold morning on 7 September 1936. The previous night had been unseasonably cold and as the staff at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart did their rounds, they found there had been a death during the night. The zoos only thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) had mistakenly been locked out of its sleeping quarters and had succumbed to the cold. With the demise of this animal, a species went extinct. Although unlikely to have been the very last living thylacine, it was certainly the last physical evidence of the species. To this day, the 7th September is marked as Australia’s Threatened Species Day. This death also marked the end of over a century of persecution that began when Europeans invaded the island of Tasmania in 1803. Eager to gain independence from their colonial masters in New South Wales and England, and to overcome the problem of infrequent arrival of supplies, the establishment of agriculture was of prime importance. As the claiming of land for farming and grazing progressed, it was inevitable that conflict between rural communities and the thylacine would occur. The thylacine was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Although once distributed across Australia, it became confined to the island of Tasmania approximately 3,000 years ago. Like all marsupials it’s young were born at a very early developmental stage and lived in their motherís pouch for about 4 or 5 months until fully furred. Due to its dog-like shape and size, and the bands across its rump, the thylacine was commonly called the marsupial wolf, marsupial tiger, zebra wolf or marsupial hyena. These commonly used names did nothing to engender an appreciation of the animal to Tasmanians. By the 1880s, many farmers were complaining of difficulties in establishing sheep farms around Tasmania. Extensive stock losses were reported and the thylacine was blamed. A fierce lobbying campaign began and eventually the Tasmanian Government was persuaded to pass legislation to pay a thylacine bounty of £1 per adult and 10/- per young animal. This was not the first thylacine reward. Farmers had often paid their workers for killing thylacines, but the government’s state-wide scheme was to prove very successful. From 1888 until the last bounty was paid in 1909 over 2,000 animals were killed for the reward. At the same time, thylacines were also being collected for display in zoos and museums. Although the last bounty was paid in 1909, thylacines could still be found in the Tasmanian bush. However, by the early 1930s it was clearly a very rare animal. The thylacine that died in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on 7th September had been captured in 1930 and lived at the zoo for six years. It is the only known thylacine that was fortunate enough to experience the full protection of the law. Legislation declaring the thylacine a fully protected species was enacted on 10 July 1936. Unlike its forebears, this lucky animal in the Beaumaris Zoo was able to spend the last 57 days of its life safe from human predation. Kathryn Medlock Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Thyl acine Study Number 1
Thyl acine Study Number 2
Thyl acine Study Number 3
Thyl acine Study Number 4
Thylacine 1936 In his latest series of eight painterly photographs, McGlennon heralds the majestic Thylacine, extinct since 1936, as a figure of heroic strength and sentimental regret. He idealizes and memorializes the great native marsupial, as wild master of the bush, despite its treatment in the C19th as untamable beast, as mere dog. His photographs are monuments to a time when the Anthropocene had not yet begun; where human activity had not yet disturbed the native ecology, nor caused the demise of this august species. McGlennon composes scenes with Thylacines placed singly and in male/female pairings (reminding us of impossible future populations) upon a rocky outcrop with distant Romantic Sublime scenery beyond, images resulting from a nine-day shoot in Tasmania in 2012. This formal, stylized format, though, has a conceptual reversal. Rather than the great explorer or expedition scientist as central point of interest, the view is focussed on the extinct Thylacine. In C18th ad C19th traditions, animals were painted in the background or as companions to humans, as witnesses to manís exultant victory over Nature. McGlennon reverses this by placing human life (sailing ships, a Victorian pumphouse on the foreshore, a line of controlled bushfire) in the far distance. The Thylacine are now the heroes and mankind is the distant witness. This provides a disruption to how we habitually perceive Nature. Rather than an anthropocentric view of the world, these photographs remind us of the conventional hierarchies we have created within the animal kingdom, and changes that dynamic.The value of animals, as having equal importance as humans, is growing in contemporary culture. This ontological view of the world, as a composite of egalitarian and democratic ëthings,í has flourished in recent philosophy and in animal rights activism, where food cycles, eating patterns and ecological care are attracting critical attention. McGlennon is conscious of fragile life cycles and our human habit of collection and classification. Butterflies, waratah and bottlebrush flowers appear in the artistís foregrounds as dioramic specimens. This is another disturbance in our culturally constructed view of ‘real/unreal’Nature and this, ultimately, is McGlennonís strength as an artist; to awaken us from a slumber of preconceived aesthetic ideas and offer something new.
Prue Gibson Art Writer Lecturer at COFA UNSW
Thyl acine Study Number 5
Thyl acine Study Number 6
Thyl acine Study Number 7
Thyl acine Study Number 8
MICHAEL REID SYDNEY
BERLIN
MURRURUNDI