Illuminated Grotesque
Perspex lightboxes
2009

This piece was made in response to architectural ornament on buildings from Medieval times (commonly known as gargoyles and grotesques), which continue to be a feature in certain urban landscapes. It is the fantastical creatures that were made by combining known elements to create something ficitonal that I wanted to work with here (for example, a mermaid is a combination of a woman and a fish).

Each of the 2 lightboxes has the head of an animal from a Medieval bestiary on one side (from the Sancti Epiphanii Physiologum, 1587) and zoological drawings of jellyfish by Ernst Haeckel on the other (from Art Forms in Narure, 1904). Each lighbox combines parts of representations of animals from different time periods to create a new composite creature (and an architectural feature).