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<td align="center"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Shark
Bite - South Africa '97</font></td>
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<td align="center"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cheetahs
- Namibia '98</font></td>
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- Cayman '98</font></td>
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<td align="center"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Tarantula
- Amazon 2000</font></td>
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<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Wild
Thing</b><br>
'Olly & Suzi Untamed' at the Natural History Museum 20/07/01 - 06/05/02</font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Olly &
Suzi are outdoorsy types who like to make their art in deserts, or under
tropical seas or on ice-caps, rather than in Hoxton or Bow. They follow
scientists around for advice about when the best time is to get the
shark to bite their shark painting, or how to persuade the wolves to
come and leave their paw prints on the wolf painting. </font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Artists
used to want to take their art to the masses, Olly & Suzi want to take
their art to the herd, or the flock or the pack, and then ask them what
they think about it. Some cheetahs liked the painting Olly & Suzi had
made of them so much that they dragged it off into the undergrowth and
it was never seen again. </font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">'Our work
may not be serious but we are very serious about what we do'. </font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Working
as a collaboration, Olly & Suzi work simultaneously on their paintings
and drawings, always making their work on location and in direct contact
with their subject matter. In a major exhibition in the Natural History
Museum Olly & Suzi are showing installations of photography, film, paintings,
drawing and 3D works both inside and outside the building. While the
show is on they are also making new work in the museum. </font></p>
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<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Is your
art the process you go through to make your work or the final painting
or drawing you end up with? </b><br>
'Our work is both the objects we make and the process we go through
to make them. We can't really separate them. The photographs and the
films we make to record what we do are recordings of the performance,
and they are really as important as the paintings or drawings we make.
Our photographer Greg Williams is very much part of the team.' </font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>How
important is it that people know about your working process when they
look at your work?<br>
</b></font><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">'I
think it adds to the work if people know how we work, planning a piece
for weeks, traveling around the world and working on location in often
quite demanding environments. One of our collectors has a painting we
made of a wolf and across from it a photograph of the work being made
on location and the relationship between the two pieces works very well.'</font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <b>How
did you come to work collaboratively? </b><br>
'We started working together at college and we just had such good time
we continued after we left. It was this collaboration that led to us
thinking of other types of collaborations we could get involved in and
this has led naturally to our working with scientists, animals and different
types of environments'. </font></p>
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<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>How
do you interact with scientists?</b> <br>
'We always try to make contact with people working in the places we
want to visit who may be able to help us. Sometimes the two of us go
out in the field with just our photographer but often we're accompanied
by scientists who are working there. This is much better for us, because
in that situation we are able to interact much more closely with the
animals. </font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Although
what we do may seem a bit mad, painting hand over hand as some predator
walks towards us, scientists understand that we are really all interested
in the same thing, they categorise and study through science, we just
work in a different way.'</font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Do you
mind that your work looks quite funny? </b><br>
'We are very serious about what we do, but we are definitely aware of
the humorous side of our work. The work isn't always serious but we
are always serious about what we are doing.'</font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Has
an animal ever done something unexpected with your work that you didn't
like?</b> <br>
'Everything we do in our work incorporates the unexpected. The way we
work with each other together on the same painting or drawing throws
up the unexpected, because you never really know what the other person
is going to do. With animals you never really know what they are going
to do either, a rhinoceros, for instance completely destroyed a piece
of work, whereas a wolf just nibbled at the corners of a drawing. It's
all part of the process.'</font></p>
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<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Is there
any animal you haven't worked with yet that you would like to? </b><br>
Komodo dragons and leopard seals. We have traveled all over the world,
but there are still many places we would love to visit and many animals
we would like to work with, we are always looking for new challenges.
As part of the exhibition in the NHM we are actually working behind
the scenes with scientists working with very tiny insects and mites.
</font></p>
<p><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Are
you worried that showing work in the Natural History Museum will impose
fixed meanings on your work?</b> <br>
At first we wondered whether it would work, but now we see it as a very
good place for our work because the Natural History Museum is all about
exploring the world. In that respect we are no different from the scientists
who work with animals. We are all turned on by the same stuff, it's
just that we produce something else as an end result. For us our work
is all about understanding the boundaries between art and science and
exploring those boundaries. </font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><i>by Andrew
Lockhart </i></font></p>
<p><i><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">All
images by Olly & Suzi with Greg Williams<br>
All images © Growbag</font></i></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><b> </b></font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><b>Natural
History Museum<br>
South Kensington<br>
SW7</b><br>
hours: open daily Monday-Saturday 10am-5.50pm, Sunday 11am-5.50pm</font><font size="1"><br>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">admission: free entrance
to the exhibition with museum entry (£9 adults, up to 16 free,
over 60's free, £4.50 concessions)<br>
<b><a href="http://www.mykensington.co.uk/kensington/goingout-artsculture-naturalhistory.htm">read
more about the Natural History Museum</a></b></font></font></p>
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