Allergic to Musical Anthologies

‘Allergic to Musical Anthologies’ (2010) was a wall installation of Australian insects, or in many cases, pests. It was created using drawings of creatures considered loathsome such as cockroaches, termites and stink beetles; those that cause fear such as bees, wasps and spiders and those that are found endearing such as dragon flies, lady beetles and butterflies. These images were drawn on A5 pieces of paper with a ballpoint pen and then scaled down with a photocopier to represent the miniature, detailed, fascinating and terrifying nature of insects. The drawings were then cut out and mounted onto small circles of violin music and set into a series of black plastic jar lids.
Cut-outs of pest control ads from the yellow pages accompanied the insects with claims such as: “Get rid of pests today! Protect your children for low cost! Pests can be damaging to your health!” It can be seen by these ads that the pest control industry is strongly propelled by fear. The title of the work was derived from the non-literal fact that human beings have an aversion, or, allergy to insects and other 'pests'. The intention of this work is simple, to compare something considered heinous with something beautiful; music.
This work has since been damaged and so will not be shown again.