Night’s Plutonian Shore

Taxidermy freaks me out. It probably freaks you out a little too. That’s why it was strange that I found myself actually kind of seeing the bizarre, ghoulish beauty in Julia deVille’s current exhibition. Breathing unusual life into dead animals, deVille fuses literature, mythology and the ancient art of taxidermy to explore the element of magic that animals bring to our understanding of life and death. The result is a dark, surreal, but strangely charming collection of works that cannot be compared to anything I have seen before.

The title of the exhibition, Night’s Plutonian Shore, is borrowed from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Raven, which (if I may digress into a brief literature lesson) tells the story of a despairing lover lamenting his heartbreak to a mysterious, talking bird. The bird repeatedly responds, ‘Nevermore,’ which gradually drives the young man to madness. He eventually condemns the raven to ‘Night’s Plutonian Shore,’ or the underworld, suggesting that the bird is a messenger from the afterlife.

Inspired by the rich imagery in this poem, deVille began work on this exhibition by researching Greek and Roman mythology, pouring through fables and poetry for references to the magical qualities of ravens and other animals. Each piece in the exhibition is titled with fragments taken from The Raven, and each is connected to a myth. A kitten fitted with a jewelled saddle and stirrups, for example, represents the myth of the Charon kitten. As deVille explains, ‘It wears a saddle to carry souls to the underworld over the River Styx. Lots of different religions and philosophies have various ideas about whether that’s a place of judgment but generally the ferrymen (the kittens) are not judgmental. They’re just there to guide souls.’

The creatures themselves are sourced from Tasmania, and deVille performs the preservation process herself, which can take several months for each animal. While it might seem macabre, the creatures she preserves are not images of death, she says, but rather of the precarious fragility and the infinite wonder of existence. ‘For me, taxidermy is a celebration of their lives,’ she says. ‘It’s the polar opposite of a hunting trophy.’

deVille has been practicing taxidermy for over eight years, and I’m sure she does it lovingly- so I’m not questioning her ethics. Part of the purpose of her work is to challenge perceptions and knee-jerk moral judgements. ‘People wear leather shoes and eat hamburgers,’ she points out, ‘but (if you) make an artwork from a stillborn kitten… people tell you it’s cruel and disgusting.’

The most interesting effect of her work, however, is that while my instinct is to shudder at the idea of dead animals being put on display, the delicacy and love with which she has preserved them and presented them as artwork reveals to me the peculiar charm of what she is doing. I still find it a little grotesque- but I can see the beauty in it, and I enjoyed being transported into the mystical world she has created.

Julia deVille’s Night’s Plutonian Shore is at Melbourne’s Sophie Gannon Gallery until August 21.