In 2005 internationally renowned American artist Mark Dion was commissioned by Dundee City Council to carry out a project on the re-development of the bear enclosure at Dundee’s Camperdown Wildlife Centre. Dion is best known for large-scale projects that cause us to re-examine classification systems and labels used by specialists such as curators, archaeologists or ethnologists to explain our material culture. Working collaboratively, he represents his findings in a way that allows viewers to actively question such systems with a fresh objectivity.

This striking large-scale print based on the Camperdown project was styled on an old French educational poster, and it comprises selected reproductions of antique engravings which chart perspectives relating to the history of the Camperdown site and the brown bear. During the move of the Camperdown bears to their new site, keepers captured a paw print to add to the chart. Posited alongside the artist’s collection of associated texts, these images generate uncertainty rather than an educational assertion: a forum for re-examination of our past and present narratives.

Courtesy of Dundee Contemporary Arts