Lot 164: JO LONGHURST

Twelve dogs, twelve bitches from The Refusal
Number 2 from an edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs. Accompanied by a signed Certificate of Authenticity.

Each 40.6 x 61 cm. (16 x 24 in).

Twenty-four colour coupler prints, printed 2003, each flush-mounted.

2001-2002

Twelve dogs, twelve bitches, Discovery Award nominee. Rencontres d’Arles, France 2005 (another example exhibited); Nützlich, süß, und museal / das fotografierte Tier (The photographed animal / useful, cute and collected), Museum Folkwang, Essen, October 2005 – January 2006 (another example exhibited); The Refusal, Museum Folkwang, Essen, 5 April – 15 June 2008 (another example exhibited)

Steidl, Jo Longhurst: The Refusal, 2008, pp. 14-15

Acquired directly from the artist

Jo Longhurst lives with Whippets; they have been and still are her objects of study. What inspired her engagement with this subject is the question of how the idea of animals as a collection of individuals has been transformed into the idea of ‘the animal’, denying any individuality to the single animal within its collective.  
 
We react differently to portraits of people than to portraits of animals. Why and in what way? These are the questions the viewer is confronted with when standing before Longhurst’s work. ‘On looking and being looked at’ is the title of a text in which she asks why humans are under the illusion that they understand animals and why they anthropomorphise them. The fact that it is impossible to unequivocally decipher an animal’s gaze, as Jo Longhurst believes, provides us with the possibility of seeing ourselves in a different light.
 
Despite their utter perfection, Longhurst’s works unnerve the viewer through the polarity of rational documentation and emotional- situational depiction. It is precisely these antagoistic pictorial forms that reflect the complexity of the subject matte, thereby allowing the viewer to access it.
 
Ute Eskildsen in Jo Longhurst: The Refusal, 2008, p. 10-11