My Feejee Mermaid (2006)

Pencil on illustration board
Drawing commissioned by Kim Paton

Sister City

17 August-2 September, 2006, Blindside, Melbourne

"When moving from city to city we take the essence of ourselves with us. In the form of memories we reflect on the many things we have seen and experienced, trying to reclaim a sense of who we used to be. With the passing of time these memories fade, becoming abstracted and dislocated in the depths of our minds.

Attempting to reconnect with her past Kim Paton has commissioned another Wellington based artist, Bronwyn Smith, to sketch an image based on a childhood memory. Still etched in Paton's mind is the image of the feejee mermaid, the fossil of a mythological monkey fish seen on many occasions during visits to Christchurch's North Brighton Zoo.It is not what place this faux fossil had in the zoo that distresses Paton, but rather the blurriness and fragmentation of this memory.

The relationship between the two artists, and between myth and memory is pivotal to this work. It is not a collaboration but, rather, a contractual agreement. Like an image from a dream that cannot quite be accessed Paton has opted to sacrifice some of her vision in order for the work to be completed with final responsibility for how the mermaid is realised resting with Smith. However Smith cannot entirely own the subject of the work either, following a set of parameters provided by the artist and having never seen the fossil and with the cosure of the zoo fever a decade ago preventing her to do so.

Through her relationship with Smith, Paton hopes to re-visualise the mutated sea creature and grasp more clearly what it was like to see through her young, believing eyes. Drawing from Paton's memory this work is more than just a lamenting of a lost past but as an exploration into the process of remembering. With memories becoming more and more abstract with age, Paton's work illustrates her struggle in making them tangible acting out a desire to bring to life a specific time and place."

- Andrea Bell, excerpt from Sister City catalogue essay, 2006