5th NOVEMBER to 1st DECEMBER 2009
In conversation with the artists - 6 - 9 PM 17th November

Viktor Wynd’s Little Shop of Horrors annouces the London debut of Dominion, a colloboration between artist Angela Cockayne and author Philip Hoare, whose intention is to evoke the mysterious shape and meaning of the sperm whale. Cockayne and Hoare perform a 15 minute film made at the 18th century manor house, Corsham Court (famously a location for Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon).  Using artwork, objects, text and sound, they attempt to come to terms with human history and natural history, and the uncanny region in between.  The result is an aesthetic sermon, delivered from a mythic cabinet of curiosities, on the state of the whale and the world.  Dominion will be on show at the Little Shop of Horrors throughourt November.  On 17 November, Cockayne and Hoare will be conducting a conversational event based on the work, at the gallery.
 
Angela Cockayne’s most recent project, Chimera, 2008, melds wax sculpture with natural objects to create startling juxstapositions.  Desmond Morris has written of her work: ‘Every day nature offers us beautiful objects that we fail to appreciate because we see them only in the too-familiar context of their mundane roles.  By taking them out of their usual contexts, Angela Cockayne makes us see them afresh, and in the process, creates an endearing whimisical bestiary all her own.’
 
Philip Hoare’s book Leviathan or, The Whale, won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.  His work has been praised by W. G. Sebald, who wrote, ‘Philip Hoare’s writing is quite untrammelled by convention and opens up astonishing views at every turn’.