The_Archive

Originally 'The_Archive (Te pito o te kainga)'. Infinite loop, HD, colour/audio, 10’00”, 2017. Over the course of ten minutes, a small island, no more than a rock, is circumnavigated. At its centre stands a dodo bird, guarded by a dog and surrounded by animals that seem frozen in time. Early 18th century Dutch sailors discovered the Dodo on the island of Mauritius. By the end of the 18th century the bird was extinct. The work is both a 3-dimensional landscape painting in the tradition of Romanticism and a natural history museum habitat diorama-derivative, an assembly of 3d scans, models that – like taxidermy – are only a shell.