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Course: The British Museum > Unit 7
Lesson 1: Contemporary Sculptors at the British MuseumTim Noble and Sue Webster, Dark Stuff, at the British Museum
Tim Noble and Sue Webster describe themselves as artists of circumstance. Walking through the Egyptian galleries they were inspired as to how to use the mice, shrews and toads they had collected. Curator Neal Spencer highlights the appropriateness of such a display, given that in Ancient Egypt animals were bred, slaughtered and mummified in their millions. © Trustees of the British Museum. Created by British Museum.
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This is really Amazingly interesting! How do they preserve the animal's body's so it doesn't smell, and lasts for a good few years to keep the art formation, and how are they holding the animals together?(3 votes)
Video transcript
where artists that make things out of circumstance will be going for a walk and they'll suddenly find something like they're a dead maps on the street and I'll put it in my pocket and I'll take it home and I put it in the freezer because I know it will come in useful one day after two or three years we did quiet over hundred things mainly small mice baby rats choose the odd toad we wandering around the Egyptian galleries all of a sudden it all way click in my head and I knew exactly that I've got this fantastic accumulation of mummified creatures I actually got repetitive strain injury from cleaning out the inlets look these creatures as well I never seed physio overs there was a few times that I was nearly sick but I got over it well it seems particularly appropriate to have noble Webster's work here in this gallery because of the phenomenon of sacred animals being mummified in their millions during the first millennium bc in ancient egypt these were animals that were bred in captivity slaughtered at a very young age prepared as mummies and then sold pilgrims who are visiting temples people see these works and they tend to look at the light source and believe that there's a slide projecting shadow onto the wall shadow is she made from meticulous placing of the objects on the actual sculpture I want people to be inspired and an old buy something that she's new I suppose the british museum is full of old antiquities and because they've passed the test of time they've become or inspiring and things that are modern and that the new almost get rejected is being cons and tricks and it would be nice to place something that's incredibly contemporary contemporary are amongst these rooms and to and to get some kind of magic from Modern Art you you