Specimen is a series of projection, photographic and video artworks made with the Australian Institute of Anatomy Specimen Collection from the National Museum of Australia. These Specimens in jars lack any detailed records of their origin, rendering them eternally dislocated from their own histories, from the timescales and landscapes in which they lived. Instead they sit preserved in toxic formaldehyde.
Many of the specimens represent species heavily impacted by human activity. By projecting photographs of their ghostlike presences back onto the landscape, Specimen invites audiences to attend to and consider their relationship with their natural environment and its non-human community.
In Australia these images were projected back onto the landscape from which they were removed, in the UK they were projected onto places connected to the colonisation of Australia. Animated by place, the final photographs render these specimens both present and absent in a changing environment.
Specimen has been show at Artlands in Dubbo (read catalogue) 2016, in Wagga Wagga (2017), Falls Creek (2017) and in London and Portsmouth UK(2018). In 2018 it will tour to another 2 locations in NSW.