Josephine Pryde (b. 1967, UK)
Darling Little Guinea Pig Ear, 2009

Mumok, Vienna, Austria / Visited on 18/01/2020

What strikes me first is Pryde’s unconventional mode of exhibiting a photograph – sticking out from the wall wrapped around an aluminium tube. As I’ve been looking for alternative ways to present photos myself – playing with ideas of “photo sculpture” and similar – this was most relevant example of how other artists have been approaching same problem.

Then there is always a flip side of the same inquiry – why? How? Would the novelty only signal novelty or can it facilitate generation of other meanings? I cannot know for sure what Pryde’s thinking was in this particular case, but guinea pig as well as tubes carry connotations of a test lab, while ear and tube carry connotations of hearing… and then there is the complication of this particular display mode obscuring the photographic image, and proposing the title as its substitute… So here I find enough of tensions and juxtapositions for associative meaning generation without any particular reading being explicitly imposed.