MEET THE ARTIST

ARTIST Anna Berger has long been intrigued by the “cabinets of curiosities” contained within natural history museums.

“I started looking at animals and plants and human beings’ fascination with collecting things, not just animals and plants but things in general,” says Berger, an art teacher at St Mary’s College in Hobart.

“Several hundreds of years ago royalty used to collect these mythological creatures and objects like unicorn’s horns and other strange things. They were magical items and I became fascinated by that history of keeping creatures of wonder and strange objects to try and possess them.”

Berger has created her own cabinets of curiosities for Vandemonian Naturalia, an exhibition of her prints at Wild Island Gallery in Hobart.

The series of 17 prints shows a variety of taxidermied Tasmanian animals, including birds, Tasmanian devils and pademelons, and plants contained within ornate glass cabinets inspired by European architecture.

“This shows the displacement of these creatures that were once alive and thriving in their own environment, but are now caught, classified and frozen in an animate yet lifeless state,” says Berger, a Fine Arts graduate of the University of Tasmania who has worked as a printmaker in recent years.

This exhibition follows on from her recent historical Recherche Bay series.

Berger says tags on the animals in Vandemonian Naturalia indicate they are taxidermied specimens.

“People are thinking a lot about extinction these days, with the decimation of our native flora and fauna through bushfire and climate change,’’ she says.

“[The work reflects] the thought that possibly all we might have left in the future are some taxidermied animals.”

Vandemonian Naturalia is on display at Wild Island Gallery, Hobart, until March 6.