Notes on Demonstration Exhibition: The Ammonite Order, or, Objectiles for an (Un)Natural History

Abstract

The demonstration exhibition, The Ammonite Order, Or, Objectiles for an (Un) Natural History (2008–09) explores a non-deterministic relation between digital mediation and spatial practice that supplants the primacy of real objects present in gallery space. The outcome of a research residency in London, the theme for this work evolved out of imaginatively projecting a ictive ”˜correspondence’ between two local personages: the architect George Dance (the Younger) and naturalist Charles Darwin. Drawing implicitly upon a creative curatorial impulse in order to pursue this narrative fabula, the exhibition space unfolds as a multidimensional installation that combines physical elements with an accompanying set of media content. The exhibition promotes a model for a diferent type of aesthetic experience through defamiliarising how the art object is modulated at the intersection of the exhibition.