Exhibition turns animal world ‘a bit upside down’

Tūhura Otago Museum exhibitions and creative services head Craig Scott admires "The Kingdom", a 40-piece exhibition by Dunedin jeweller Jane Dodd on display at the museum. Photo: Peter McIntosh

A fur seal wearing a fake beard and an orangutan cuddled up with a gibbon are not the usual animal antics you would expect to see at Tūhura Otago Museum.

But a new jewellery exhibition in the museum’s Animal Attic features scenes that turn the natural world "a bit upside down".

The exhibition, "The Kingdom", is a showcase of 40 distinct jewellery pieces produced by Dunedin artist Jane Dodd over more than a decade.

Dodd — who has exhibited her jewellery internationally and is also known for playing bass guitar in seminal Dunedin bands The Chills and The Verlaines — said the exhibition explored animal lineages and challenged the idea that humans were "the kings of the kingdom".

Dunedin artist Jane Dodd examines Freesia, a piece of jewellery made from bone, lignum vitae and glass, on display as part of the "The Kingdom" exhibition at Tūhura Otago Museum. Photo: supplied

The jewellery items, which included necklaces, brooches and a ring, were arranged in the exhibit connected to nine different coloured pipes, each representing one of the nine major biological classifications (phyla) in the animal kingdom, which together resembled one big evolutionary tree.

Her pieces included an octopus wrestling in a string of pearls, a fur seal trying to pass itself off as a whaler by wearing a fake beard, and an orangutan and a gibbon having a cuddle, "which would probably never happen in real life", Dodd said.

"A lot of my work is about the situations we've put animals into, the way in which we have kind of assumed that the world is there for our needs and our wants.

"I just sort of try and turn that a bit upside down, really.

In Hiding. Ebony, lignum vitae, sterling silver, onyx. Photo: supplied

"Even though quite a few of the stories in my jewellery are quite dark, I always want them to be a bit funny as well."

Other jewellery items featured a flamingo holding a paintbrush and a polar bear elevated to "a saintly state".

Most of the jewellery was carved from wood, some was taken from old furniture and wooden bowling balls, while others used bone offcuts from a butcher and, in one case, a dyed antler.

The Animal Attic was an "absolutely perfect" place to display the work, as it was also organised in the same classification system and displayed most of the same animals she had represented with her jewellery, Dodd said.

Wrestling. Mother of pearl shell, sterling silver, freshwater pearl, garnet. Photo: supplied

"It's quite a lovely conversation that's going on between my artwork and the real examples from around the world that have been gathered over the years.

"They're the more straight versions, although some of them are pretty funny."

Dodd said she hoped viewers of the exhibition came away with an understanding that the world of contemporary jewellery could be just as varied as the animal kingdom, and contemplate that this "incredible diversity" was in peril.

Tūhura Otago Museum had been "a constant" of her life when she was growing up in Dunedin and was a place she had spent "thousands of hours" since she was a child.