Joseph McGlennon

M I C H A E L R E I DS Y D N E Y B E R L I N M U R R U R U N D I

JOSEPH MCGLENNONThylac ine 1936

Giclee digital prints on archival Hahnemuhle Fine Art paper

100cm x 120cm Edition of 8 & 2 Artist Proofs

One "Hero" image of the above at 150cm x 170cm

Michael Reid Sydney

44 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay,

Sydney, NSW 2011

+61 2 8353 3500

Gallery Hours

11am-5pm, Tuesday to Saturday

www.michaelreid.com.au

MIchael Reid Berlin

Ackerstrasse 163

D-10115 Berlin, Germany

Gallery Hours 11am-6pm,Tuesday to Saturday

[email protected]

+49 (0) 175 6265 100

Photographed on location in Van Diemans Land

TASMANIA’S TIGER

It was a very cold morning on 7 September 1936. The previous night had been unseasonably cold and as thestaff at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart did their rounds, they found there had been a death during the night.The zoos only thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) had mistakenly been locked out of its sleeping quartersand had succumbed to the cold.

With the demise of this animal, a species went extinct. Although unlikely to have been the very last livingthylacine, it was certainly the last physical evidence of the species. To this day, the 7th September is markedas Australia’s Threatened Species Day.

This death also marked the end of over a century of persecution that began when Europeans invaded theisland of Tasmania in 1803. Eager to gain independence from their colonial masters in New South Wales andEngland, and to overcome the problem of infrequent arrival of supplies, the establishment of agriculture wasof prime importance. As the claiming of land for farming and grazing progressed, it was inevitable that conflictbetween rural communities and the thylacine would occur.

The thylacine was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Although once distributed acrossAustralia, it became confined to the island of Tasmania approximately 3,000 years ago. Like all marsupials it’syoung were born at a very early developmental stage and lived in their motherís pouch for about 4 or 5 monthsuntil fully furred. Due to its dog-like shape and size, and the bands across its rump, the thylacine was commonlycalled the marsupial wolf, marsupial tiger, zebra wolf or marsupial hyena. These commonly used names didnothing to engender an appreciation of the animal to Tasmanians.

By the 1880s, many farmers were complaining of difficulties in establishing sheep farms around Tasmania.Extensive stock losses were reported and the thylacine was blamed. A fierce lobbying campaign began andeventually the Tasmanian Government was persuaded to pass legislation to pay a thylacine bounty of £1 peradult and 10/- per young animal. This was not the first thylacine reward. Farmers had often paid their workersfor killing thylacines, but the government’s state-wide scheme was to prove very successful. From 1888 untilthe last bounty was paid in 1909 over 2,000 animals were killed for the reward. At the same time, thylacineswere also being collected for display in zoos and museums.

Although the last bounty was paid in 1909, thylacines could still be found in the Tasmanian bush. However, bythe early 1930s it was clearly a very rare animal.

The thylacine that died in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on 7th September had been captured in 1930 andlived at the zoo for six years. It is the only known thylacine that was fortunate enough to experience the fullprotection of the law. Legislation declaring the thylacine a fully protected species was enacted on 10 July 1936.Unlike its forebears, this lucky animal in the Beaumaris Zoo was able to spend the last 57 days of its life safefrom human predation.

Kathryn Medlock

Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Thylacine Study Number 1




Thylacine 1936

In his latest series of eight painterly photographs, McGlennon heralds the majestic Thylacine, extinctsince 1936, as a figure of heroic strength and sentimental regret. He idealizes and memorializes thegreat native marsupial, as wild master of the bush, despite its treatment in the C19th as untamablebeast, as mere dog. His photographs are monuments to a time when the Anthropocene had notyet begun; where human activity had not yet disturbed the native ecology, nor caused the demiseof this august species.

McGlennon composes scenes with Thylacines placed singly and in male/female pairings (remindingus of impossible future populations) upon a rocky outcrop with distant Romantic Sublime scenerybeyond, images resulting from a nine-day shoot in Tasmania in 2012. This formal, stylized format,though, has a conceptual reversal. Rather than the great explorer or expedition scientist as centralpoint of interest, the view is focussed on the extinct Thylacine. In C18th ad C19th traditions, animalswere painted in the background or as companions to humans, as witnesses to manís exultant victoryover Nature. McGlennon reverses this by placing human life (sailing ships, a Victorian pumphouseon the foreshore, a line of controlled bushfire) in the far distance. The Thylacine are now the heroesand mankind is the distant witness.

This provides a disruption to how we habitually perceive Nature. Rather than an anthropocentricview of the world, these photographs remind us of the conventional hierarchies we have createdwithin the animal kingdom, and changes that dynamic. The value of animals, as having equal importanceas humans, is growing in contemporary culture. This ontological view of the world, as a compositeof egalitarian and democratic ëthings,í has flourished in recent philosophy and in animal rightsactivism, where food cycles, eating patterns and ecological care are attracting critical attention.

McGlennon is conscious of fragile life cycles and our human habit of collection and classification.Butterflies, waratah and bottlebrush flowers appear in the artistís foregrounds as dioramic specimens.This is another disturbance in our culturally constructed view of ‘real/unreal’Nature and this,ultimately, is McGlennonís strength as an artist; to awaken us from a slumber of preconceivedaesthetic ideas and offer something new.

Prue Gibson

Art Writer

Lecturer at COFA UNSW





M I C H A E L R E I DS Y D N E Y B E R L I N M U R R U R U N D I

Documents

Joseph McGlennon