6.2.10

hamburger bahnhof & "bestiarium"





A trip to the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art to see Walton Ford's 'Bestiarium' exhibition.  The building is a little similar to Musee d'Orsay in Paris, although the train station features are carried through even further, with passages between the main building and adjacent spaces designed to look like present day underground tunnels.  It is an excellent space in which to display huge installations of modern art (you know the ones that sometimes leave you scratching your head saying "what?"

Walton Ford's exhibition was also great.  I especially loved the interplay between the letters and the paintings.
"At the office in the morning and did business.  By and by we are called to Sir W. Battens to see the strange creature that Capt. Holmes hath brought with him from Guiny; it is a great baboone, but so much like a man in most things, that (though they say there is a species of them) yet I cannot believe but that it is a monster got of a man and she-baboone.  I do believe it already understands much English; and I am of the mind it might be tought to speak or make signs."  
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 24 August 1661.

"These settlers have since they came to reside at the Bluff River killed and destroyed a great number of tigers (...) The loss of sheep during the past 18 months has, however, been great (...) and thus aid sheep farmers to eradicate the pest from amongst their flocks."  
The Tasmanian Mail Supplement, 30 April 1887.

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