Alice Myers
From the Series Humane Trap
2020
Limited edition of 18 + 2 APs
Signed and numbered by the artist on a Certificate of Authenticity
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Image Size: 346 x 277mm
Paper Size: 366 x 297mm
£200
As the world struggled to control the spread of Coronavirus I found myself locked down with the mice who had moved into my house. An internet search for solutions indicated this as a problem people struggle with worldwide. It seems a very human thing to live with ‘pests’ while devising elaborate ways to control them. It also seems very human to continually attempt and fail (as I did) to contain the haphazard natural world.
Elizabeth Fisher’s ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Human Evolution’ suggests that ‘the first cultural device was probably a recipient’, a container for gathering rather than a weapon for hunting. The contemporary everyday containers in this series testify to the ongoing human resourcefulness in making receptacles to put things in. However, these objects have been adapted to entrap and imprison, drawing attention to the submerged violence of containment.
So far not one of the traps has worked. They wait for activation, for a decisive moment, for an unsuspecting mouse.
