Looking back: Fatal exchanges (2017)

Fatal exchanges (detail) | 2017 | Site-responsive installation, plus 12-page publication

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work. Fatal exchanges, made with Megan Calver in 2017, seems especially appropriate as it focuses on the effects of a virus.

Drawing on a text, Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B Toklas, the work examines a network of deaths resulting from instinct, accident, pleasure and necessity. Created during a group residency on the Cotley Estate in Somerset, it was inspired by an event in 1832 when the hounds of the Cotley Hunt were struck by the rabies virus and the Master of the Hunt had to shoot all but one of them.

A lot of people approached the work assuming it was vehemently pro- or anti-hunting but our stance was one of curiosity. We set aside our own abhorrence of blood-sports to try to understand the relationship that the Cotley estate owners and their staff had with fox-hunting. Ultimately, we were able to place hunting in the wider context of land management; not apologising for it but trying to think dispassionately about what humans and non-humans do, not only to survive, but in the pursuit of pleasure. It should be noted the estate now imports fox urine from the US for drag hunting, but memories of the original ‘sport’ live on.

We built our installation out of found objects from the site. At its heart was a  magpie trap, acting as a plinth for a sad old taxidermy fox with bare-boned feet and a stick-like brush. We were told he was about 100 years old; he was also alive with carpet beetles. The cycle of life and death continued.