Tom Butler : Inhabitants

20 Feb-28 Mar 2015

Overview

"Earlier in the year a curator asked me if there was a limit to the number of my cabinet cards works. I said no, because it felt like I was growing a population of characters that continues to surprise and fascinate me. However, this was a new idea because I realised they were becoming a population or citizenship and more than just an ongoing series of characters. To let the population grow I started imagining an island (of sorts) where they could exist and I could continue to create them. It wasn’t until later in the year that I read H.G. Wells’ ‘Island of Dr Moreau’, where a shipwrecked man is rescued and brought to the shores of a mysterious island populated with beast-men who are created by Dr Moreau in scientific experiments. Wells’ island itself is unnamed, as is its strange population, only described in the book as: ‘the inhabitants’." Tom Butler