Louise Weaver
Louise Weaver: Moonlight Becomes You
5 July - 24 August 2003
Louise Weaver's menagerie of crochet covered animals seem to have been unleashed from museum cabinets and let loose in a glittering disco culture. From an otter sporting a giant mirror-ball medallion to a lime-green racoon in a pair of movie star shades, the Melbourne-based artist transforms familiar animals into new and fanciful beasts.
Clothed in glittery skins of crochet, sequins and beading, the creatures in Moonlight Becomes You strut their stuff on a stage bathed in moonlight. Starting with high density foam moulds commonly used by taxidermists, Weaver grafts on a new skin, patiently crocheted, stitch by stitch. Posed before us and spot lit as though they were in a series of staged tableau or dioramas we are reminded of natural history displays at the museum.
Louise Weaver has described these hybrid animals as taking on the most satisfactory attributes of many varied things in order to exist in new circumstances, much as we humans ourselves have adapted to new and changing situations.
Moonlight Becomes You was first commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, as part of NEW03.