Output details

An Interpretation of the Title, Nietzsche, Darwin and the Paradox of Content

Commissioned first as part of the Edinburgh International Festival of 2009, this exhibition drew on the work of Darwin and Nietzsche, specifically excerpts of Nietzsche’s writing in response to Darwin’s ideas and sketches. These were rendered into a neon light installation, firstly upon the grey walls of the neo-classical Talbot Rice Gallery, and then on the darker walls of the more modern, open-plan, industrial space of Anna Schwartz Gallery.

The work came from curator Julianna Engberg’s invitation to curate an exhibition for the Darwin bicentenary year. Darwin had studied medicine in Edinburgh from 1825, often retreating to the then natural history museum to study taxidermy and taxonomy, a space that has since become Talbot Rice Gallery. The work draws upon this context and its legacy. The 23 white neons, first mounted around the neo-classical ground and mezzanine levels, imagined a conversation between Darwin and Nietzsche. The work focuses on Nietzsche's relationship with Darwin's theories about human evolution. Nietzsche, as John Richardson has argued, was attracted to Darwin's view yet repulsed by what he found to be its dishonesty, by its internalisation of Christian values. He held that we should endeavour ‘to see science under the optics of the artist, but art under those of life’. Excerpts from Darwin’s notebooks, including the ‘I think’ doodle, which illustrates the divisions and subdivisions within the transmutation of species and represents the transmutations of intellectual disciplines, were also included.

The exhibition is documented in an extensive catalogue published by Macmillan and the ACCA (2012, ISBN 978-1-921394-55-3).