CityLife

Exhibition: Nanoq: Flat Out And Bluesome @ Manchester Museum

A bear photographed for the exhibition

Since British zoos stopped keeping polar bears in captivity – there remains only one in the Scottish Highlands – the only place most people will encounter the Arctic beasts is in a mammal gallery at a museum.

The contradiction of this is one that hasn’t passed artists Bryndís Snæbjðörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson by. In fact, the duo were so intrigued by our unusual understanding of polar bears that they began a three year-long survey into taxidermy bears in the UK back in 2002, photographing them and detailing their origins for a luxurious coffee table book.

The book – Nanoq: Flat Out And Bluesome – and the resulting touring exhibition, which is now open at Manchester Museum, highlights with remarkable poignance the uncomfortable relationship between our knowledge of how the bears behave in the wild and our experience of them in museums and stately homes.

Manchester Museum’s bear, posed in a natural stride, features in the exhibition of 33 photographs, but it is not a typical example of how polar bear specimens have been posed by taxidermists since stuffed animals became a popular trophy for Victorian collectors.

Other examples show the bears frozen in thrilling, aggressive poses, while one distinctive example stands upright with a basket of fairy lights wearing a fez – his curious garb revealing that he was once the face of Fox’s glacier mints.

Thought-provoking

Taxidermy specimens are incredibly difficult to keep – something Nanoq (the Inuit name for the polar bear) demonstrates. Some of the bears show remarkable signs of neglect while others are undergoing restoration.

The beautiful photographs initially disguise the difficulties presented by the animals; in the wild, they are seen as dangerous beasts that could kill a man, but their image in captivity is different.

To explain the history of the bears, Snæbjðörnsdóttir and Wilson have also compiled panels of information about the places the bears were shot and captured, the names of the people responsible and the nature and purpose of the expedition, or alternatively the history of the bears’ captivity and ages of death.

Stephen Booth, curator of temporary and touring exhibitions at the museum, says the show is a thought-provoking insight into the relationship between man and bear.

“This exhibition challenges perceptions we have about our relationship with nature,” says Stephen. “It highlights the cause and effect of human behaviour, and makes us think about the legacy of our actions.”

Until July 11, 2010 free. Nanoq: Flat Out And Bluesome is part of Manchester Museum’s The Evolution: A Darwin Extravaganza season, open until August 30, 2010.