D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum Art Collection
Lindsay Sekulowicz
Golden Plover, drawing on paper, 2012. DUNUC ARTS:4427/4
Presented by the Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
London-based artist Lindsay Sekulowicz undertook a unique artist's residency in summer 2012 co-organised by the University of Dundee Museum Services, the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust and the Royal Scottish Academy. Based in the former studio of the artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham just outside St Andrews, Sekulowicz engaged fully with the collections in the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum at the University of Dundee, the Bell Pettigrew Museum at the University of St Andrews and also with researchers working in relevant areas at both universities. She was particularly interested in memory and neuroscience, spending time working with scientists at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews. The body of work she ultimately produced explored the fact that much of D’Arcy’s original museum collection was lost when the museum was demolished in the 1950s. By drawing representative specimens and creating sculptural pieces that symbolise others, her intention was to create a memory system that would help to re-create the extent of the original collection in people’s minds. Lindsay explains: “each piece represented a small aspect of a complete museum, and pointed towards a point in time when D’Arcy’s collection was complete, but at the same time speaks about the impossibility of completing a collection, or the impossibility within taxonomy. So the drawings became a memory map, that when viewed together, begin to speak about archives, collecting, the individual and collective memory.” The resulting pieces were exhibited in 2013 in "Drawn from structures living and dead".
As well as the work shown above, we acquired four of the completed drawings for the collection, one of which was donated to us, and all of the sculptural pieces (18 pieces altogether) entitled Objects for a Memory system (DUNUC ARTS:4427 - ARTS:4427/24).