Monster Mash

Tess Wing has sacrificed more than 40 stuffed animals to create her eclectic collection of sculptures.

The Dunedin student, who has very sensitive hands, is interested in the tactile nature of textiles.

‘‘Touch is a big thing for me.’’ As someone who loved drawing and art it was a toss up between art school and studying art history, but art school won out, she says.

She discovered textiles in her first year and moved into sculpture.

‘‘I’m really interested in the sculptural aspect of textiles.’’

For her final year project, she went in search of as many stuffed animals as she could find and proceeded to take them all apart.

She put them back together in very different ways — creating a new species of ‘‘animals’’, houses and lamps.

‘‘It’s all stuff that is very tactile. I hand sewed a lot of it as the shapes are patchwork and some are rounded. I’ve spend a lot of time sewing, it’s very time consuming.’’

The houses and lamps feature ceramic teeth, which Wing also made and her ‘‘animals’’, including a pink ‘‘foetus’’ — which squeaks — have ceramic clawed feet.

Her work is divided into two scenes one referencing how vultures abandon their young during food shortages if they cannot feed them, hence the creation of the ‘‘foetus’’.

‘‘It’s about how people focus on themselves more than others.’’

Wing’s interest in animals and birds came from father, who is a marine biologist.

‘‘Animals have been a big thing for me my entire life.’’

She sees animal traits in how human’s behave.

‘‘At the end of the day, we are all very primal. So this focuses on two key aspects of survival — fight and flight.’’

The lamps, with their ceramic teeth, represent the fight aspect, the ‘‘eat or be eaten’’.

‘‘They’re a gesture towards trophy hunting and incorporating domestic objects.’’

Her other ‘‘scene’’ includes a figure swathed with a long, heavy, redlined coat made from the ‘‘fur’’ of stuffed animals. She made a version of the coat last year, but made a bigger version for this year.

‘‘It’s a transitional ‘animal’ just like we transition to adulthood.’’

Tess Wing tries on the heavy coat made of stuffed animals while holding her ‘‘foetus’’ she created the same way.

Tess Wing created hundreds of ceramic teeth for her creations.