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Dominion: a film, symposium, exhibition & publication

Co-edited by Angela Cockayne and Philip Hoare, Dominion was published as a result and a record of the Peninsula Arts Whale Festival (the first to address this subject) held in Spring 2011 and co-curated by Cockayne and Hoare. The festival included a solo exhibition, Dominion, by Cockayne at the Peninsula Arts Gallery, University of Plymouth (also exhibited at Cheltenham Science Festival, 2011) and screenings of Cockayne and Hoare’s film Dominion (2009). Attracting national media attention, the project also included an interview for BBC2 Culture Show. An allied symposium invited artists, writers, musicians, leading marine scientists and academics to respond to the question of how the Whale is culturally significant to us, and encouraged dialogue on the theme between and across disciplines: ‘Dominion is a multi-layered and allusive attempt to come to terms with a shared history between human and whale, between human history and natural history, and the liminal region in between.’

Dominion reflects the fundamentally interdisciplinary approach epitomising the research collaborations between Cockayne and Hoare addressing whales and whaling. The book, Dominion (Wunderkammer Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0956646248) gathers together images from and responses to Cockayne’s Dominion exhibition alongside interviews with scientists and interventions from poets and musicians derived from the symposium.

Film screenings of Dominion took place at: Dark Monarch Exhibition, Tate St Ives’ (2009); New Art Gallery Walsall (2009); Tate Liverpool (2010); Parfitt Gallery London (2011). Works from the exhibition were included in Exquisite Trove, New Art Gallery Walsall and the Salisbury Arts Centre; House of Fairy Tales at the Millennium Gallery St Ives and the Newlyn Art Gallery; Call me Ishmael (Parfitt Gallery, London 2011). Cockayne has subsequently been appointed an ambassador for the Whale and Conservation Trust. Funding support provided by Plymouth University, Sustainable Futures; The Leverhulme Trust; and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Trust.