Insect Wrecks : Gayle Hermick
A sculptural exploration of industry, art and nature
Canadian Museum of Nature
"It made me feel a little bit like an Impressionist, having people queue to get into my exhibition," says sculptor Gayle Hermick, laughing. "I'm a dead guy!"
Hermick's definitely not dead yet, but thank God, the giant bugs she's created are. (Although viewers go through a live insect exhibt to get to Insect Wrecks' smaller gallery.) Hermick and her mostly volunteer helpers spent the last year pulling apart, welding, sewing and sticking together bits of cars, computers, TV sets and other discarded junk to construct four enormous insects.
Looking like they're lurking and buzzing around a Mad Max-like world, the partially animated bugs come with sound effects. The metallic mosquito's 4-metre wingspan daunts viewers even more with its over-size blood-sucking implement. With a 200-cubic-foot blood-sucking capacity, a colossal white wood tick lies overturned, with its legs flailing in the air. A buzzing horsefly with artificial vision joins this dynamic duo and a dragonfly with vibrating wings completes the set.
"I've actually not just chosen insects, I've chosen parasitical insects," says Hermick. "It's just a more direct statement about being manipulated by parasitical industries." Having lived in a number of former British colonies, Hermick saw first-hand the misery still being manufactured by colonialism.
"The wood tick has a very flat head, and the whole head goes into your body." says Hermick. "And that metal bit?" she pauses, increasing the shadowy creepy quotient, "That metal structure is barbs, and they hang onto your skin." I break in with a horrified little scream - it's a reflex action for me. "It's very tiny," she says chuckling, of the white bug, "But then it fills with blood and looks like a lima bean." Charming. (My appetite for chili has just slithered under the carpet.)
For me, Insect Wrecks effortlessly conjures up flashbacks of all and sundry insect imagery, as well as of course, giving me the urge to buy a can of RAID. Memories of David Cronenburg's cinematic sci-fi masterpiece The Fly, a Dr. Who episode starring giant spiders who'd nicked a crystal from the Tardis, and, the elephantine beetles I met during a dusty summer visit to India - they all scuttle across my consciousness.
Constructing the insects was no simple task. In her bid to achieve anatomical accuracy, Hermick consulted entomologists and scientists, and the large scale meant long discussions with a structural engineer. Insects outnumber humans millions to one. What do they make of us? Other than the fact that we make a good meal when we've snuffed it and that we're all "mass murderers", who knows.
Hermick plays on human and insect perceptions particularly in her design of the horsefly. Picking up objects as they move close to them, its two TV-monitor bug eyes create the creepiest of connections. "We become part of its prey," says Hermick. Plus, if they look strange to us, what do we look like to them?
It's tough not to be daunted by Hermick's thought-provoking wrecks. The size change alone brings them out from under our feet in an ultimate role reversal.
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 1999
Hermick's definitely not dead yet, but thank God, the giant bugs she's created are. (Although viewers go through a live insect exhibt to get to Insect Wrecks' smaller gallery.) Hermick and her mostly volunteer helpers spent the last year pulling apart, welding, sewing and sticking together bits of cars, computers, TV sets and other discarded junk to construct four enormous insects.
Looking like they're lurking and buzzing around a Mad Max-like world, the partially animated bugs come with sound effects. The metallic mosquito's 4-metre wingspan daunts viewers even more with its over-size blood-sucking implement. With a 200-cubic-foot blood-sucking capacity, a colossal white wood tick lies overturned, with its legs flailing in the air. A buzzing horsefly with artificial vision joins this dynamic duo and a dragonfly with vibrating wings completes the set.
"I've actually not just chosen insects, I've chosen parasitical insects," says Hermick. "It's just a more direct statement about being manipulated by parasitical industries." Having lived in a number of former British colonies, Hermick saw first-hand the misery still being manufactured by colonialism.
"The wood tick has a very flat head, and the whole head goes into your body." says Hermick. "And that metal bit?" she pauses, increasing the shadowy creepy quotient, "That metal structure is barbs, and they hang onto your skin." I break in with a horrified little scream - it's a reflex action for me. "It's very tiny," she says chuckling, of the white bug, "But then it fills with blood and looks like a lima bean." Charming. (My appetite for chili has just slithered under the carpet.)
For me, Insect Wrecks effortlessly conjures up flashbacks of all and sundry insect imagery, as well as of course, giving me the urge to buy a can of RAID. Memories of David Cronenburg's cinematic sci-fi masterpiece The Fly, a Dr. Who episode starring giant spiders who'd nicked a crystal from the Tardis, and, the elephantine beetles I met during a dusty summer visit to India - they all scuttle across my consciousness.
Constructing the insects was no simple task. In her bid to achieve anatomical accuracy, Hermick consulted entomologists and scientists, and the large scale meant long discussions with a structural engineer. Insects outnumber humans millions to one. What do they make of us? Other than the fact that we make a good meal when we've snuffed it and that we're all "mass murderers", who knows.
Hermick plays on human and insect perceptions particularly in her design of the horsefly. Picking up objects as they move close to them, its two TV-monitor bug eyes create the creepiest of connections. "We become part of its prey," says Hermick. Plus, if they look strange to us, what do we look like to them?
It's tough not to be daunted by Hermick's thought-provoking wrecks. The size change alone brings them out from under our feet in an ultimate role reversal.
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 1999
