My Previous Life as an Ape (MPLAAA) is a single body of work and an exhibition comprising the four series of work detailed below. Mimics 1 (Photo-etchings), Mimics 2 (Pen and wash drawings), Mimics 3 (Photographs) and All Rise (HD video).
Related publications: the 'Mimics 1' series published in the journal ‘Tierstudien’ (Berlin) - 11/2017, ed. Jessica Ullrich & Antonia Ulrich; the ‘All Rise’ publication published by Danielle Contemporary Art including an essay by John Harrington (written entirely through plagarised texts to mimic the method of all sound being mimicked in the ‘All Rise’ moving image work) and ‘Beast’ (2020) a group show publication in which ‘All Rise’ is featured, published by OSG, UK.
Related exhibitions:'Mimics 1' and 'Mimics 3' were shown at IMPACT 9, Hangzhou; China Academy of Arts Museum, ‘Intersecting Practices of International Contemporary Arts’, Hunan University; Art 9 Gallery and “Conjunctively Evolving” Contemporary Arts from China and UK at Yun Contemporary Arts Center, Shanghai (all 2016). ‘All Rise’ was shown in the group show ‘Beast’ (2019) curated by Emily Glass at the ‘Visualising the Animal’ conference at University of Cumbria (2015). All four works were shown in ‘MPLAAA’ in a solo show at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art (2015).
Mimics 1 (2015) A series of 5 photo-etchings, 13 x 17 cm
Facing onto the central landscaped area at Lincoln’s Inn is the UK’s largest concentration of lawyers’ chambers – a labyrinth of period buildings in which legal cases are prepared in close proximity to the courts. Coutts sent each chamber a letter inviting participation in her project. A single sheet of their official headed notepaper was requested on which Coutts proposed drawing a series of mimetic animals with the landscaped area as backdrop, arguing that on some level these animals had evolved similar attributes to lawyers in their manipulation of foreground and background, dark and light.
The paper acquired from five chambers was ultimately not used for this purpose (see Mimics 2). Instead Coutts made a series of photo-etchings using found images of mimetic animals, fish, birds and insects to occupy the landscape that the lawyers move through every day. The oriental flying gurnard, sun bittern, owl butterflies, serval and four-eyed butterfly fish all display eye spot markings in addition to their own, making them two conflicting animals, one housed within another.
Mimics 2 (2015) A series of 5 pen and wash drawings, 297 x 210mm
Coutts invited former court artist Sian Frances to participate in the project. With cameras banned from English courts, court artists take their place. Forbidden to take notes, or even make preparatory sketches, they must instead commit an entire detailed scene to memory to draw later. During Coutts’ discussions with Frances, someone Coutts knew committed a murder, yet to come to trial. Based on internet pictures of his arrest, Coutts found a look alike and re-enacted a sequence of images of the murderer being taken from the relative privacy of a police van into the full glare of the media and the public view. The re-enactment took place at Lincoln’s Inn where Frances memorized the scene and drew them later on the lawyer’s headed notepaper. Re-enacted images of the murderer also featured in the HD video ‘All Rise’.
Mimics 3 (2015) A series of 6 C-type prints, 100 x 66 cm
The look-alike of the recent murderer was asked to imitate still images of students from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD), who as part of their training must learn to become animals. The imitations are set in animal enclosures at London Zoo.
All Rise (2015) 7’30” HD video
ALL RISE involved working with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where students in their first year train in collaboration with London Zoo to become various animals. Instructors at PEM (Perdekamp Emotional Method) another set of participants, replace empathy and experience within their technique with physiological connections with the internal organs. Working with them involved constructing images of rage, lust and grief transferable to the representation of animals. Other participants include a dancer/researcher from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance who mimics human actions associated with otherwise mechanized reprographic processes. The Magna Carta is read through a fist by a Royal College of Art graduate. Apes are mimicked by humans who work with them day to day.
Every element of the film involves an act of copying, translation or repetition.
In ALL RISE, all animals sounds are made by humans and all musical sounds are made by animals. The machinic reprographic sounds are foleyed. The sound of wood sawing and chain sawing at the very end of the film is made by a lyrebird, imitating the sounds of its habitat being destroyed.
