As modernity matures, once strict genres and disciplines bloom into ubiquitous and hybridised micro-scapes. Strangely, as these terrains merge and blur, animals assume the function of cultural barometers, mapping the changing nature of both eastern and western cultural values. From 'mockumentary' filmmaker Christopher Guest's Best In Show (2001) to more sober documentary studies such as Microcosmos (1996) to the bio-ethical and scientiific debates of Peter Singer and Stephen Jay Gould, animals provide a complex philosophical vehicle through which identity and culture are regularly contested... Rebecca Ann Hobbs' Suck Roar melds portraiture and narrative to produce a series of images that tease and stretch definitional boundaries. Each image features the artist variously interacting with animals of contrasting design. These photoscapes combine fiction (collective) and fantasy (personal), femininity and ferocity, wetness and hunger, fear and affinity. In each tableaux, Hobbs invites the viewer to ride a range of humorous and thought-provoking tropes.
With thanks to Larissa Hjorth

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