mouse
Sue Lorraine
‘I have developed a fondness for the 20th century Dutch naturalist and collector Willem Cornelius Van Heurn. In his collecting frenzy Van Heurn often acquired specimens that were of no immediate scientific significance to him and these found their way into their own sub groups; for example his most celebrated piece: the ‘uncurated miscellani’, which is a jar of wet specimens containing amongst other things a snake, fetal pig, double apple and cat’s gut.
It is this piece in particular, a jar of things he didn’t know what to do with, that caught my attention. This in turn reminded me of the story of the collector’s collection that contained a box labeled ‘string not worth saving’ and suddenly I became interested in the accidental collections, random systems and a personal taxonomy.’
This is an edited extract of a text that accompanied Lorraine’s 2006 exhibition (with Catherine Truman) at Gallery Funaki; Found in Translation.
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Jul 4 - Jul 29, 2006
found in translation
