Paul Chaney

For most of his career as an artist, Paul Chaney has used art to reflect on our relationship with animals and other living organisms, thus 'counterpointing a universal morality against the concept of human morality, and making manifest a morality that extends beyond the anthropocentric view'.

His most accessible and affecting works have involved a respectful celebration of a dead animal’s life. For example during 2000 he made small shrines out of plaster for dead insects and placed them in churches and Cathedrals in Devon, Dorset and Somerset (pictures above). The photographs that resulted superficially appear to be part of a Northern European gothic tradition, but the sentiment and morality is more reminiscent of Eastern religions such as Jainism. If we respect a human life by offering a memorial to it, why shouldn’t we respect the lives of animals too - and thus recognise our inter-dependence with them even in death?

He has made similar shrines all over the world, including as part of the eco-art organisation 'Bike Art' that toured Africa and the UK during 2000.

More recently Paul has ritually buried animals he has found on the side of the road. 'Roadkill graveyard' (work in progress - picture above) seems to speak strongly of the extent to which we have become indifferent to the suffering and exploitation of animals in our rush to get on with our lives. According to Paul, both the bee shrines and 'Roadkill graveyard' are about 'memorialising the near infinite complexity of the 'nature machine' - as described in Lovelock's gaia hypothesis'.

Related to these two big projects is a lighter more playful work. ‘Bee adventure’ (2003) is a book of photographs of a dead bee held on a stick and photographed in a number of different counties in Southern England. A simple idea, it has a fanciful narrative quality and we get a charming bee-like view of the world. Once again, though, the fact that the bee is dead distinguishes the work from e.g. a TV wildlife documentary, in that it is more about the idea of whether an animal can have a soul, and even whether its experience can ever be knowable by humans.

A similar theme was explored in Paul's contribution to Wheal Art Weekend in 2006 (see review - now archived), in which he set up a field tent on the site of an old tin mine, and recorded the burrowing and digging activity of animals, comparing their industry and work to that of humans, and suggesting that perhaps we are not so different.

Most recently he has turned his attention to the estuary close to his wharf-side studio in Falmouth, and has used lasers to mark the height of the tides that would result there in the event of polar ice-cap melt (above). Unlike many artists in Cornwall who limit their work to formal and aesthetic concerns, this piece, like the rest of Paul's work, is full of content, much of which is difficult but important.

http://www.magicmule.co.uk/paulchaney/

RW January 2007