Tidepool is an exhibition of new articulated animal bone sculptures by Gerard Geer. In creating this series, Geer explores a potential connection between land mammals and ocean creatures, imagining that cephalopod-like creatures could evolve in a way that could bring them to land while retaining some of their strongly ocean-evolved features. In addition, he sought to explore the relationships among these creatures: perhaps rather than being solitary creatures, like they might have been in the ocean (as in our world’s evolutionary path), they might become social creatures.
Geer explores this connection among the creatures in this body of work through expressive facial tentacles, which the creatures use to probe the environment around them, communicate with one another and convey emotion to viewers as they inevitably anthropomorphise the creatures.
Geer chose to work with cephalopod-esque features and design because octopi are (in our world) truly representative of the ocean, demonstrate remarkable intelligence and utilise a wide range of methods of communication. Deer were another morphological inspiration for this series because they represent animals truly connected to the land (in our world), and they are also highly social animals that have strong family groups.
Photography by Valentin Zhmodikov.
