Soccer Dad

Another great moment in art history

Earlier, Secular Blasphemy and I picked up on a couple of great moments of art history. (Warning, Secular Blasphemy's is rather gross.)
Now comes another:

Never mind pickling animals and slicing them up to be your next work of modern art, why not let the put-upon animals slice something up and then use it as art instead?
One industrious gerbil is busily doing just that for the Waygood Gallery in Newcastle after the artist Sally Madge used a pet to create "A gerbil's guide to the galaxy".

The gerbil is contributing to her artwork by gnawing through deliberately chosen pages of The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book from 1933.

When Ms Madge cleans up the cage, she takes out the ripped paper to use in her work. It is thought that her furry friend will be the first animal editor in the world.
The 72-year-old book's original editor boasts that the book enables the reader to have "a mine of information at their fingertips". The gerbil is mining sections from the encyclopedia to make its nest.

I'm not upset that people consider this art. I'm upset that I haven't come up with anything suitably stupid to pass off as art myself!
(Thanks to Bill Venko of WBAL news for alerting me to this!)

Posted by SoccerDad at July 15, 2005 7:36 AM