Michael Quane RHA

Quadrupeds are simply animalness and represent the myriad of connections that exist between us and that state, within us and without. The quadruped started with my representing or studying my close companion, Shona, when I started practicing first after graduation. She was with me everyday as I worked: a witness to my masked and bespectacled self; making an infernal racket and clouds of dust. She was a white Lylwellan setter and was a conduit and metaphor for lots that concerned me as a developing artist. Most of my peers and all my friends were exercised by gender, its politics, its imperatives during those formative years in the 1980s in College. The quadruped became a medium for my work in this regard. The threads of meaning extend far and are, through my expression, sensitive to ‘other’, ‘species’, ‘difference’, ‘nurture’, ‘diversity’