118 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 119see things from the point of view of the animals, speak for them or manipu-
late us into foregone conclusions. They are not twisted into misshapen
forms or made into hybrid species for sensational or instructive purposes.
They are, however, monstrous, in the sense illuminated by contempor-
ary feminist theorists such as Nina Lykke, Rosi Braidotti and Donna J.
Haraway: they destabilize the normal order of things to bring it into ques-
tion. The boundaries between human and animal are made porous in this
configuration. The historic rationale for maintaining a human/animal
divide is encapsulated in Passenger: the animals wear our clothes, and their
bodies replace our tool-making hands. In this embodied gesture, the estab-
lished order that defines the human in opposition to animals is undermined.
Haraway, in When Species Meet ( 2007 ), considers our present challenge
in a way that resonates with Vickerd’s work: “We are in a knot of species
coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way
down. Response and respect are possible only in those knots, with actual
animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their
muddled histories.”
Vickerd uses the responses of his own dog, Blue, to verify the human-
ness of a particular figure. If his dog ignores it, he knows that he will have
more work to do to sculpt a persuasive human, but if Blue barks at it and
is threatened and protective, then he knows he’s got it right.
As Vickerd’s dog confirms, the sculptures have a convincing verisimili-
tude even in their strangeness. The figures in Passenger, as well as Ghost
Rider ( 2015 ), The Sub-Mariner ( 2015 ), Animalman ( 2015 ), and even the
strange insect-like hybrid assemblages from Chopper Series ( 2012 ), feel more
inevitable than made, as if Vickerd found them or conjured them from
somewhere else and just brought them here to our attention. Plunged into
their worlds, we can reflect back upon ours.
Vickerd also brings the comic-book hero into the art gallery. Ghost
Rider is transformed into an art object for contemplation as he stands,
impeccably painted in red automobile paint, in a classical contrapposto
pose, enfolding Michelangelo’s David and the heroic stances of the Power
Rangers with Ancient Greek marble sculptures and the cool ’60s icon of
Easy Rider. Figures from different times are connected through the mytho-
logical intrigue of the heroic.
Animalman embodies our awe of the physical prowess of animals. He
has the enviable power to be able to temporarily acquire the abilities and“striving to mimic the human form for some unknown purpose.”
Adding to the discomfort, the animals were as lifelike as the humans
they mimicked. Squirrels, owls, doves, hedgehogs and ducklings were
suspended in mid-action—lifelike animals placed where they didn’t normally
belong. Some of them stared back with a querulous look.
The significance of the looks that animals give us, the ways these looks
are received and the impact they might have on our relationships with
animals are subjects of much thought and inquiry. Perhaps, as John Berger
maintains in “Why Look at Animals”( 1977 ), 20th-century corporate
capitalism finalized a process, begun in 19th-century Europe and North
America, that increasingly separated us from animals, so that now “that
look between animal and man...has been extinguished.” From a world
apart, we allow ourselves unthinkingly to perpetuate much injustice upon
animals. Indeed some of the ways in which taxidermy animals have
been used in art practices would support this: animals are severed and
put back together in hybrid forms, used as stand-ins for humans or to make
an extraneous point.
Yet it seems as if more consideration is being given to animals as think-
ing and feeling beings recently. Videos of unlikely animal friendships reveal
animals as complex and capable of relationships across species. The killing
of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe by an American big-game hunter sparked
outrage around the world and, closer to home, an art student in London,
Ontario, was forced to remove her art piece—taxidermy rabbits with
stitched-on turkey wings—from an exhibition due to an overwhelmingly
negative public response. In Toronto, an impromptu memorial that looked
very much like an art installation was spontaneously set up around the
body of a dead raccoon.
Vickerd, a vegetarian, describes the process of taxidermy as “completely
revolting” but states that, “The moment of surprise, of striving to classify
what it is you are seeing, is crucial.... It is similar to when you walk around
the corner of your house and come face to face with a skunk. It is a visceral
confrontation that cannot be sustained with representations, only with
real fur and claws.” About half of the animals he uses in his sculptures are
bought on eBay or Craigslist, and the other half he taxidermies himself.
What is essential in Passenger is that the animals remain themselves.
This elevates the artwork from being exploitative of the very group whose
neglect and mistreatment it draws attention to. Vickerd does not claim to“The moment of surprise, of striving to
classify what it is you are seeing, is cruciaI,”
says Vickerd. “It is similar to when you
walk around the corner of your house and
come face to face with a skunk. It is a visceral
confrontation that cannot be sustained with
representations, only with real fur and claws.”
Vickerd_ spr16_15TSLR.indd 118 01/29/16 3:22 PM