museum research – More Than A Dodo

First Impressions: exploring early life through printmaking

by Rachel Parle, public enagement manager

In each of our special exhibitions, we complement contemporary scientific research with contemporary art. In recent years this has included Elin Thomas’s crocheted petri dishes, Ian Kirkpatrick’s migration and genetics-themed installation, and who could forget the enormous E. coli sculpture by Luke Jerram?!

First Animals exhibition is on show until 24 February 2020

For our current exhibition, First Animals, we’ve taken this collaboration to a new level by commissioning original works from a total of 22 artists, all part of Oxford Printmakers Co-operative (OPC) – a group of over a hundred printmakers which has been running for more than 40 years.

First Animals looks at the very earliest evidence of life on Earth, dating back half a billion years. Some of the fossils on display are shallow impressions in the rock – the only direct evidence we have that life existed at that time.

*Amplectobelua symbrachiata –* one of the incredible Cambrian fossils from the Chengjiang site in China

To kick-start the project we ran a series of workshops for OPC artists to meet the Museum researchers working on the exhibition, and to see the fossils first hand. There were also opportunities to draw directly from these unique fossils, many of which have never been displayed in the UK before.

Discussions between researchers and artists revealed fascinating similarities between these ancient fossils and the process of printmaking. Sally Levell, of Oxford Printmakers Co-operative, explains:

I was completely fascinated by the fossil collection in the Museum, especially the fine specimens from Chengjiang and Newfoundland. They are preserved as mere impressions in the rock, so they are, in essence, nature’s prints.

Each printmaker partnered with a researcher who could answer questions, provide extra info and help the artist decide which specimen or subject to depict in their final print. It’s clear from talking to the printmakers that this direct contact with the experts was invaluable and made the work really meaningful.

We couldn’t have worked without the patient explanations and “show and tell” sessions with the three main researchers – Dr Jack Matthews, Dr Imran Rahman and Dr Duncan Murdock. They were just excellent and their dedication to their work was an inspiration to all of us printmakers.

Sally Levell

Over a period of around seven months, ideas blossomed and printing presses were put into action, with the printmakers exploring the forms, textures and evolution of the fascinating first animals. The final result is First Impressions, an enticing art trail of twenty-five prints dotted around the Museum, both within the First Animals exhibition gallery and nestled within the permanent displays.

Such a large group of artists brings a huge variety of techniques and styles, all under the umbrella of printmaking; from a bright, bold screen print in the style of Andy Warhol, to a delicate collagraph created from decayed cabbage leaves! To take part in the art trail yourself, simply grab a trail map when you’re next in the Museum.

Workshop printers inking up their plates

But our foray into fossils and printmaking didn’t stop there. OPC member Rahima Kenner ran a one-day workshop at the Museum where participants made their own intaglio prints inspired by the First Animals fossils. The group of eight people featured artists and scientists alike, all keen to capture the unique fossils through print techniques.

Designs were scratched onto acrylic plates and inked up, before a professional printing press created striking pieces to take home. Participants also explored techniques such as Chine-Collé, the addition of small pieces of paper to create texture and colour underneath the print.

It was a delight to be able to share with the group our enthusiasm for these discoveries in the medium of making the drypoint prints and to share their enjoyment of learning and using the new techniques. Some lovely work was produced in a single day.

Rahima Kenner

A finished print, using intaglio and chine-colle

The First Impressions project has been transformative for the Museum team and for the Oxford Printmakers Co-operative. Catriona Brodribb describes its impact on the printmakers :

It’s been a great opportunity to challenge one’s own artistic boundaries in terms of stretching the imagination, and for our members to throw themselves into something new, and enjoy responding to such ancient material in a contemporary way.

The First Animals and First Impressions exhibitions are open until 24 February 2020 and are free to visit.

A tale of two seahorses

Real or fake? Do replicas have a value of their own? Elaine Charwat is exploring this in her PhD, using the Museum’s large collection of natural history models and casts to research their role in science. Here she tells the story of the fascinating fish that caught her imagination…

By Elaine Charwat

It all started with a seahorse. Last year, I walked into a little seaside shop, and I spotted a seahorse. I instantly flipped back to the happy day I bought my first dried seahorse as a child, the beginning of a life-long passion for the natural world. The man behind the counter smiled: “It’s a fake.” Really? “3D printed.” It looked absolutely perfect. Tracing its lines with my fingers, I said, “It’s a model”.

Ever since I became interested in models and replications, I have encountered this perception of them as “fakes”. Quite recently, I heard the curator of a natural history museum call the cast of a dinosaur skeleton a “fake”. Models in natural history – and in this I include casts and reproductions – are what the Germans call “Wissensdinge”, objects that contain, distribute and generate knowledge. In this aspect, the real specimen and the model meet. Models are made from a vast array of materials with often astonishing skill and technologies. They represent what we know about a particular organism at a certain point in time. They have a history, a context.

Long live the replica! Most of our most beloved dinosaur skeletons in museums are partly or fully casts of bones, like Stan’s here at the Museum. Almost complete skeletons like Stan’s are extremely rare, and casts allow us to share and preserve them. Accompanying models give the bones “flesh and blood” – and provide a snapshot of what was known about the dinosaur when the model was made.

But they are also ambassadors, and this is something I realised when I held the “fake” 3D-printed seahorse in my hand. While it becomes ethically problematic to buy specimens of organisms like seahorses, something of it is captured, and communicated, in a reproduction. I can still trace its exoskeleton, and marvel at its strange symmetry. This symmetry, incidentally, is being analysed for its potential in robotics. Seahorses have unusual tails – instead of the cylindrical trail structure found in most animals, theirs have a square cross-sectional architecture, resulting in a unique combination of toughness and flexibility. In fact, when studying the unique abilities of the seahorse’s tail, researchers have actually used 3D-printed specimens.

Seahorse from the Museum’s collection. Even in Victorian times, long before 3D printers, there seems to have been a desire to emphasise that souvenir seahorses were “natural” – i.e. not man-made. Was it because seahorses are easily preserved and so attractive when dead and dried?

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History has a largely unexplored wealth of models and casts. Many of them date to the second half of the 19^th Century, the heyday of their production. Made from glass, wax, metal, wood, plaster, papier-mâché or, indeed, actual bone and feathers, they were modelled, cast, sculpted, glued, painted and mounted to enhance and preserve our understanding and appreciation of nature. But they also tell of scientific discoveries and controversies, research and teaching, rivalries and collaboration, politics and society, ideas and identities.

Small IMGP5899 — Spot the replica – both the specimen and the 3D printed seahorse are “Wissensdinge”, they have a context and provide valuable information.

I will trace these complex relationships in a collaborative and interdisciplinary PhD project called “Nature of Replication”. This is funded by the AHRC and jointly supervised by the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The 3D-printed seahorse now lives alongside my real seahorse. So I like to think of my project as a journey that started with one seahorse, and continues with another.