The work: Linda Greedy, Specimens, Australian Museum, 2022. Oil on board, 61 x 46cm. $1,490.Courtesy: the artist
New South Wales artist Linda Greedy’s creative process is propelled by a desire to dissect both her own methods of observation and more systemic processes of analysis and display. “I’m interested in the things we do, what we collect, what we choose to preserve, and how we choose to live”, she says, which is summed up in her work Specimens, Australian Museum. As a local of Port Stephens on the mid-north coast, it is unsurprising that fish and sea life occupy a large part of her visual repertoire. Huge skeletons seem to float against a white wall, hung amongst smaller taxidermied creatures, which flit above stingrays and sharks. Some are recognisable to the layman’s eye, such as the Blue Marlin and the Sawshark, while others are more mysterious. Given the institutional setting, the numbers assigned to each specimen would usually be paired with a key to help identify them, but the artist has left this out. In doing so, the fish cease to be a didactic tool or scientific display, instead serving to evidence the strange beauty that can be found in the ocean’s depths. Her expressive paint strokes breathing new life into what is usually a static spectacle, Greedy asks of her audience to question what makes this display and others like it so deeply compelling.