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Chimera (solo exhibition)

Objects from the famous seventeenth-century museum, Tradescant’s Ark, that are usually displayed in the Ashmolean Museum, were on display in their original Oxford home, the Museum of the History of Science for two years. The Museum invited Cockayne to offer a response to the collection in the form of an exhibition.

Collections of curiosities from the time of Tradescant often contained ambiguous objects that challenged contemporary categories, such as ‘natural monsters’ or objects located between art and nature, such as a ceramic cast from a creature - Tradescant had a ‘mermaid’s hand’, which was probably fashioned from the limb of a manatee. Using found natural objects and materials to recreate a non-hierarchical collection of ‘chimeras’, Cockayne made an array of objects that were displayed in cabinets alongside the collection, and which explored the categorisations.

This interdisciplinary approach set out to challenge the domains of natural science and art. Cockayne represents images and objects, transforming materials to subvert new narratives. In a collection of new work Cockayne presented a curious mix of ironic humour, absurdity and spectacle through the playful combination of natural materials. Coral, animal bone, and cornhusks were attached to squid bodies cast in wax, with legs fashioned from hairgrips and champagne wire. ‘Every day, nature offers us beautiful objects that we fail to appreciate because we see them only in the too-familiar context of their mundane roles. By taking them out of their usual contexts, Angela Cockayne makes us see them afresh and, in the process, creates an endearing, whimsical bestiary all her own.’ (Desmond Morris 2008)