Joanne Smithers

The grey area that exists between animals, as they are known as biological creatures and animals as they are perceived as part of our society, is filled with mythologies and sentimentalities. The creatures that exist in the realms of our collective imaginations belong neither to the biology books nor to the natural world. Smithers’ hollowed out horse legs stand upright, waiting to be slipped on, to begin an awkward centaur transformation. They are definitely not alive, but not quite dead, not animal but not quite human either. In forming a link between fantastical animal mythologies, taxidermy, and the human body, Smithers creates hybrids whose object-ness removes them further from the arena of the ‘natural’, and closer to the condition that caused them.