An exhibition of the works from the photographic archive. In total the archive comprises of 32 framed, medium format colour photographs of the polar bears in situ in their respective public and private collections and settings, together with the provenances of the specimens. The contexts of the respective specimens range from cluttered natural history displays through the measured, grand arrangements of colonial artefacts in stately homes to the genuinely domestic and unpretentious surroundings of private homes. Some are in storage, some neglected and some undergoing restoration. Each piece incorporates a text describing the provenance of the specimen, its place of capture or shooting, the name of the person responsible, the purpose of the expedition, its history in captivity, its age etc. The project was conceived in four parts over a period of six years in total. 1. The first part was a complete survey of taxidermic polar bears in the British Isles, undertaken by the artists with the assistance of museum curators and keepers of natural history collections throughout the country. (2000-2004) 2. The second part was the photographing of the polar bears in situ and the display of the resulting photographic archive together with the provenances of each individual polar bear in a variety of museum and art gallery contexts. 3. The third was an installation comprising ten of the stuffed polar bears in a converted industrial or light-industrial art space. During the five-week life of the installation the artists organized a one-day conference (White Out) at which four invited speakers an audience and the artists discussed issues around the many associated themes prompted by the project – museology and display, taxidermy, the colonial impulse, arctic exploration, subsistence and trophy hunting, shifting attitudes to environment etc. (2004, Spike Island, Bristol) 4. The fourth part of the project was to bring all of the information gathered, the provenances, the photographic archive, documentation of the installation together in a publication with essays from those speakers and writers who took part in the conference. (2006, Black Dog Publishing) “The polar bears are photographed as they are when we find them. In each museum they are arranged in a different way. In the Hancock Museum, Newcastle, the display is set up with animals on or around an ‘Ark’ - the polar bear is ‘roaming’ on the flats to one side, next to a lion, deer, a bison and a host of other animals of disparate origin. In Kendal the polar bear, shot by (the local) Lord Lonsdale stands up aggressively with a painted arctic image in the background. Next to it is a deer head and a glass-cased musk ox. In Eureka the polar bear, originally from Dundee is partly hidden, high up in the building in an ‘attic’ display amongst bicycles, a Victorian rocking horse and an old hoover. It stands at the back, half-hidden looking out of the glass-panelled building onto the car park below. In Hull the bear has a painted image of a polar bear in the background but is displayed next to a skeleton of a baby polar bear in a glass case. Against this case is a 19thC image, possibly of the same bear, standing next to its dead mother on board the ship that brought them over. The project also addresses the bears as a symbol of status: many were shot by members of the aristocracy – and as a consequence were brought to private estates where again, we have photographed them as we find them, very often amongst a disparate collection of historical and colonial artefacts Some displays are under construction and this contemporary adjustment and reinterpretation informs part of the work. In Arbuthnot Museum in Peterhead for instance, which was undergoing reorganization at the time of our visit, a white cloth covers the polar bear and this simple fact inevitably invites new meanings. Most collections with bears have one or two specimens – providing only glimpses of a history not only of their killing, but of an attitude to predators which Western colonists carried all over the world – one of suspicion and machismo, of implicit superiority and simultaneously of fear. By assembling through photography, this new collection of bears to which this happened, we are re-introducing evidence of this ‘enterprise’ as particular to Britain, thereby inviting a confrontation with history. In the case of the installation in Spike Island, they are removed from the interpretive ambience and inflection of the museum. Importantly, the display of these animals in such a variety of ways as evidenced in the photographs, leaves us caught in limbo. Clearly we are confused as to what to do with the legacy. It is no longer possible to see the bear as an animal in the way perhaps it was before moving pictures and sumptuous wildlife documentaries. So what is it? It is our intention to raise questions about reality and the power of the image - how today we read images and interpret them as the real things - the photographic element of the project is pivotal to this. As a consequence of this crucial and practical research, we have accumulated an archive of photographs. Our commitment to make this work is further inspired both by the response of the museums to the critical nature of the research process, and by the opportunity to make the work ‘site specifically’ in such a way that will inspire a new debate within a context other than the art gallery. The different exhibiting outcomes, that is in the gallery and within the collection of the museum, are vital parts of the same work, they use the context of the museum and the gallery in very specific ways to activate the concerns and issues that run within the work. The displacement of the bears from their space within the gallery, and the photographic framing of the context in which they are found, then placed back within the museum, intensifies the artists exploration, mirroring and interrogating the original act, one which we would now regard as destructive and entirely transgressive”.