'Beasts', a series of black-and-white, silver gelatin photographs was shot inside the Biologiska museet, Stockholm, a museum which housed a 360-degree diorama depicting a panoramic sweep of the Nordic wilderness, in an elaborate mise-en-scène combining taxidermy with a painted backdrop. The museum remained almost unchanged between 1893 and its unexpected closure midway through Byrne’s production, in 2017. 

The artist’s interest in the museum was first inspired by the peculiar visual appearance of the diorama, which is illuminated solely by natural light entering from roof skylights. For Byrne, this dependence on daylight blurred the distinction between museum and camera. With its skylights functioning as lens aperture and its diorama of taxidermy animals poised in frozen photographic stasis, the Biologiska Museet appeared proto-photographic, it’s diorama a foreshadow of the Photograph itself. 'Beasts' is testament to in-animation; each print pictures the carefully poised relationship between photography and deadness. 

Byrne also made a film inside the diorama, 'Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli' (Film Inside an Image) 2015-2016. Presented as a Single Channel film and back projected onto a sculptural environment the work is played on a continuous loop. Byrne’s film takes us on a sweeping, never-ending journey though the 360 degree diorama of the Biologiska museet in Stockholm. The unsettling experience is amplified by the accompanying sound track, a multi-layerd cacophony of animal calls, bird songs and various other sounds of the wild.

'Beasts' and 'Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli' (Film Inside an Image) invite us in and around the impossible scene of arrested Nordic wilderness, lit only by limited natural light to ponder such photographic attributes as stasis itself, seamlessness, dust, and the shifting historical contingencies that determine what is a photograph at a given cultural moment.  (10 minute segment of work below)

This portfolio of photographs was shot in the Biologiska museet, Stockholm, on 23 and 24 August 2017. I had already spent quite a bit of time at the museum over the previous two or three years, preparing for, and making a film of sorts, entitled Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli, which roughly translates from southern Sami as a film inside an image. Indeed, the film was already being shown at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm when I returned that August. The previous April, on the afternoon of its scheduled exhibition opening at the Moderna, a man in a truck ploughed through shoppers outside the Åhlens department store in central Stockholm, leaving fatalities and many injuries. The city went into lockdown. The exhibition opening was of course cancelled. 

So when I returned on 22 August it was under the shadow of the museum’s imminent closure after 124 years. I arrived armed with two brand new 50-sheet boxes of Kodak sheet film, and some specific ideas about the possible photographs the museum could yield. What I didn’t reckon with was the increasing fallibility of film manufacture and distribution systems in 2017. In my hotel room, I placed the film boxes, and the film cartridges used to hold sheet film inside a light-proof changing bag. When I put my hands into the sleeves of the bag to blindly load the film, I was shocked to feel that the sheets of new film were stuck together – welded together, like an irregular brick, inside the sealed yellow Kodak box. I desperately peeled the sheets of film apart as carefully as I could, and over the next 48 hours I shot as much damaged film as daylight would allow. The museum closed within days.

Later I found a specialist to work with on developing the film, in the hope of salvaging what I could of the material. I sent him the film and corresponded by email, about establishing an approach to the fragile material. I tried to contact Kodak for technical advice, but “Kodak”  now appears to exist largely as a brand name for a licence – a piece of “intellectual property”  and a bunch of 1-800 numbers and web links which lead me nowhere. A yellow mirage of what was. I never managed to reach anyone with any technical knowledge of film. And as this was happening, I also noted that dispatches with my film processing guy were difficult – his developing machine kept breaking down, and parts were hard to find, he seemed to be struggling more generally. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear from him in weeks. The museum had closed. Months had passed and I hadn’t seen anything. There was no possibility of a re-shoot. 

installation view:
Gerard Byrne: 1/125 of a second
2016
Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Gerard Byrne discusses 'Beasts' with Ben Luke for 'The Week in Art' podcast by The Art Newspaper
conversation begins at 36 min.

CLICK HERE

Gerard Byrne
b. 1969, Dublin, Ireland.
 
Working primarily with lens-based media, Gerard Byrne has established an international reputation for his creation of complex film installations that interrogate how the past is presented to us. Exploring the paradoxes of visual information Byrne often draws upon mass media, popular culture and literature, from British tabloid newspapers to the High Modernism of Beckett. His work draws our attention to the construction, transmission and interpretation of text and images, highlighting the impermanence of meaning. Marked by a deadpan sense of humour, his investigations of contemporary cultural phenomena have often seen him return to such diverse topics as the Loch Ness Monster, American radio, the legacy of the Minimalist Movement, and the culture of men’s popular magazines.
 
Recent exhibitions include Centraal Museum Utrecht (2020); In Our Time, Serlachius Museum Gosta, Finland (2019) ; A Visibility Matrix, Void, Derry, Northern Ireland (2019), Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (both 2018); Upon all the living and the dead, Secession, Vienna (2019); Jielemeguvvie guvvie sjisjnjeli – Film Inside an Image, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2017); ACCA, Melbourne, Australia; Mead Gallery, UK (both 2016); Graz Museum, Austria; Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland (both 2015); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; The Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2013); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2012); IMMA, Dublin; Milton Keynes Gallery; The Renaissance Society, Chicago (all 2011); Lismore Castle Arts (2010); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2008); Dusseldorf Kunstverein; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (both 2007); MUMOK, Vienna (2006); BAK, Utrecht (2004); Frankfurter Kunstverein (2003).
 
In 2007, Byrne represented Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.  He has participated in Busan Biennale (2020); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017); dOCUMENTA 13 (2012); Performa, New York (2011); the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); Auckland Biennial (2010); Gwangju Biennial (2008); Sydney Biennial (2008); Lyon Biennial (2007); Tate Triennial (2006) and the Istanbul Biennale (2003).