Goth Tourist in Glasgow

On my little holiday in Glasgow, I indulged myself by visiting various art museums. But, not all darkly inclined people are such art museum freaks as me, so I am going to feature just four sights that are rather gothy and are available all year around. All of these also happen to be free of charge.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum are an extensive collection of art, natural science, and history. The exhibit space is filled with paintings, statues, taxidermy animals, armors and what not.

My personal favourite of the artworks was this distressed Harpy by Mary Pownall (1902). The title of the work is The Harpy Celaeno. It was almost impossible to take a photo of the statue, for some reason my phone's camera refused to focus on it. Spooky.

The harpy is groping her chest, her claws bite into her own skin, and her face expression implicates sorrow and pain. Harpies are usually depicted without hands and often in groups, so this is an unusual sculpture. It is much more human than is customary.

From 1st of April till 1st of October 2017 they feature an exhibition of superheros and comics. It looks very interesting but unfortunately I did not get to see it.

Glasgow University & the Hunterian Museum

Magnificent Gothic architecture of the University is worth checking out, and so is the Hunterian Museum inside it. The museum is named after William Hunter (1718–1783), who was a former student of the University and a keen collector of all things marvelous. His collection was the base for the museum. Collection ranges from the artifacts of Ancient Rome to Physics inventions.

The most macabre part of the collection is the Anatomical and Pathological Collection. Many of the samples are human but some are disfigured animals with more heads and feet than is usual.

The Glasgow Botanical Gardens

Glasgow Botanic Gardens are a marvelous place but for goths and other macabre folk the Botanic Gardens offer a whole room dedicated to killer plants. These plants are carnivores and on my visit I learned that there are 5 different method categories for the plants to trap their pray. One of them being 'lobster pot traps which use inward and downward pointing hairs to force pray to move towards a digestive organ'.

I doubt these particular carnivorous plants in the photo use that method of 'lobster pot traps' but they sure are beautiful. The other rooms of the hothouses were very nice too.

Glasgow Necropolis

Last but not least, the Glasgow Necropolis. It is a Victorian garden cemetery and there are many beautiful and ornamental gravestones and memorials. The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis organize guided tours and it is a good idea to participate one if possible. The Friends of Glasgow guides give depth to your visit, because they can tell about the history of the graves and the cemetery.

If your visit doesn't match with the tour program, another thing I can recommend is to buy a book they've published: The Glasgow Necropolis After lives – Tales of Interments by Ruth Johnston. It costs £ 8 plus delivery but it does make your visit way better. Me and my friend had that book with us when we went on our visit and it was marvelous.

We started on the recommended route up the hill and every time we saw an interesting gravestone, we searched its photo from Johnston's book. The book includes 150 most interesting graves and Johnston has collected all sorts of facts about the artwork, the lives of the people who are buried there, and so forth.

I hope these tips will be helpful for another goth tourist in Glasgow!

Creepy Reads Review: Taxidermy Art by Robert Marbury

I bought a copy of Robert Marbury's Taxidermy Art - A Rogue's guide to the work, the culture, and how to do it yourself on my trip to New York last spring. I think I bought it from the museum shop on MoMA. Marbury is one of the founders and the director of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy and an acknowledged artist.

As the title suggest, this book is non-fiction and for a person like me, who has little knowledge about how to actually make taxidermy or about its history, this was a good and informative opus. I also like the way Marbury writes, he does not became too repetitive even though the book consists of artist presentations and there are only so many ways to express certain basic information.

After the introduction to the book at hand there is also a short and compact introduction to the history of taxidermy and also to those historical persons who contributed to the development of taxidermy practices. I like that part very much, that the contemporary artists are contextualized like that.

Taxidermy Art introduces artists from all over the world, which is fantastic. Well, most of them are from the US, a few from the UK, and a couple from Europe and New Zeeland and Australia. But as the opus states the artists introduced in it are the most popular and well-known ones at the moment. It seems that taxidermy art is more popular in the English-speaking world and hence most artists are from those countries. The book presents 21 artists/artist duos.

Here are two of my favorite works and I would love to have one of these (or another of her works, her website is like a candy store for me!) myself: Still Birth (Green) and Still Birth (Blue) by Polly Morgan.

Lisa Black from New Zeeland makes gorgeous works in which animal and machine merge. I had not known about her works if I had not bought Taxidermy Art.

I can happily recommend this book. The photos are fantastic and in the end there are even instructions on how to make a taxidermy oneself. Though it is not like I am going to try them anytime soon.

Trip to Hunting Museum spiced with ethics and twisted humor

This weekend I went to the Hunting Museum of Finland. It is situated in the city of Riihimäki, which is accessible by train, bus, and private car. By car the trip takes about an hour from Helsinki to Riihimäki.

I ended up there because I had bought a Museum Card, which is a card that grants access to about 200 different museums in Finland for a year. Probably had not visited the Hunting Museum of Finland without that card so I am really glad I bought the thing since the museum about hunting was a surprisingly interesting experience.

Hunting Museum and Goths

I am featuring this museum on my blog because it reminded me that like hunting, goth subculture considers aesthetic many things that can be seen as ethical dilemmas.

Goths tend to have a fascination towards death. Goths tend to like skulls. It is not easy to have a skull as a decorative object without something dying first. Trophies are really popular at the moment even among more mainstream styles. How to acquire a piece of a dead creature ethically? What does that even mean?

Also, vampires are pretty popular among goths: is it necrophilia, if the dead one is still moving? ;) 

Is it ethical to roam around woods or motorways trying to find leftovers of a wild beasts' lunch or remains of a roadkill? Even carcasses have an important role in the functioning of an ecosystem in the woods, taking them all away could be problematic. With road kills something else has done the violence, so that is not on the human scavenger's conscience and the ecosystem of an asphalt road is not exactly depending on rotting substance.

Still, is there something questionable at having a part of a dead creature as art or decor at one's home? Could there be some problems with the fascination towards death among goths?

Trophies have their issues but the Hunting Museum is a great place to go to admire old trophies. (Trophies of endangered species are surely more problematic than trophies of common creatures, unless they are antique) The museum had a huge collection of exotic creatures. The trophy collection of Jaakko Ojanperä, a Finnish big game hunter, contained 90 different species. Mr. Ojanperä was born 1939 and he moved to USA 1964, mainly because of the hunting prospects. His hunting trips took him to many parts of Africa and North America.

The most natural death is a violent death. Animals in nature tend to get eaten or killed by a rival in a fight for better living space, food resources or for the right to reproduce.

Some moral views state that killing is wrong for humans. Preserving life is usually the point. In Finland a large amount of hunting is about maintaining the balance and diversity of species in nature. I learned at the Hunting Museum of Finland that a mink, which is nowadays found in Finland, is a North American species and it ended up into the nature of Finland during the 1920's. American mink is small but a real killing machine and it reproduces a lot. It is a danger for many native bird species and could cause extinction if left in peace. In Finland 50 000 - 85 000 wild minks are hunted yearly. That amount keeps the mink population at it's current size.

For me ethical hunting, whether it is for food or for decorative elements, is about trying one's best to not cause suffering. Same thing goes for the meat I buy from supermarket. I think a steak from a hunted wild creature is more ethical than eating a battery cage hen. I must say though that I myself have never hunted or participated in killing a mammal. I do eat meat and sometimes I wonder, am I hypocritical eating a lamb if I could not actually kill it myself.

From ethics to exhibitions

The museum had several exhibitions open at the same time. One featured the trophies, another hunting themed art by a famous Finnish artist Seppo Polameri, who had specialized on them. The third exhibition showed hunting knives. The fourth exhibition is about hunting in Finland and the last one is called "Thrill of the Hunt". If I understood correctly, the trophies and the two last ones about hunting are permanent exhibitions.

As you can see from the photo above, almost every museum in Finland produces information in three languages, the official languages of Finland, Finnish and Swedish, and then in English. The Hunting Museum of Finland is no exception.

This reindeer installation was quite surprising, since all other taxidermy was made life-like.

Herding reindeer is a way of living in Northern Finland. Not for everybody of coarse, but it has been practiced centuries. For people herding the reindeer it is important that the population of beasts of prey is maintained on a reasonable level.

The exhibition of the Thrill of the Hunt was well executed, The atmosphere was almost mystical.

One last thing about the museum that made me snicker:

In the front yard they had these wood screens with holes for people to put their head there and present them selves as animals. Animals, that people shoot in the nature. Photoshoot just got a new meaning...

Little something about guns in Finland

I have never fired a gun or even considered hunting as a hobby so it was interesting to read about it in the museum. In Finland there is quite a lot of guns compared to the population. According to the Washington Post Finland comes third when they compared "developed" countries and their number of privately owned guns in relation to the number of citizens. Statistics tell us that in Finland there is about 4,5 guns per 10 people. In reality those guns are owned by tiny minority of Finnish population who either hunt (6% of population) and/or take an interest in shooting sport.

The laws about guns are really strict in Finland. To get a licence to own one requires you have had shooting sport or hunting as a hobby for at least two years and you also need to pass a psychiatric assessment test. That is to make sure that a person who gets a gun has no tendency towards erratic & violent behavior nor suicide.

I hope you enjoyed my post, even though it was a bit off the usual material!

Goth Tourist in London: Terror & Wonder and other things to see

At the beginning of January I traveled to London with two friends. The main attraction was of course Terror & Wonder: The Gothic Imagination. This post is mainly about that exhibition but other things that might interest a goth tourist in London are introduced or mentioned at the end of this post!

One could not photograph in the exhibition but here is a commercial video of the exhibition and you can see tiny glimpses of the exhibition area. The atmosphere in the exhibition was not as spooky as in the commercial but the temporary constructions of the exhibition were goth-y and purple.

The first and best introduced object in the exhibition was The Castle of Otranto of Horace Walpole. Sadly this sometimes a bit absurd yet sinister novel is not as well remembered by today's goths as Dracula or Frankenstein but maybe this exhibition changed that a bit. I too got acquainted to The Castle of Otranto only when studying literature at a university.

For a literature student the beginning of the exhibition did not offer that much new information, especially of the better known classics but they were well presented. The only thing that slightly annoyed me was that when the subject was Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus they systematically used the word "monster" when concerning the creation of Dr. Frankenstein. In the book it is called Creature or Demon but very rarely Monster. Monster is a label it got from the movie industry. Frankenstein was filmed in 1931 and was part of the "Universal Monsters", because the same company (Universal Pictures) also made several films of Wolf man and Dracula.

My other friend was a bit disappointed of the final room of the exhibition. It was supposed to be about goth subculture today but it was just a few photographs of Whitby Goth Weekend. Nice photographs but still. I got the feeling that instead of being another item to show, today's goths were more like a "to be continued..." kind of comment on the whole exhibition. The things that fascinated people on the Gothic literature of 18th century are still fascinating us. Goth subculture evolves and is very diverse so trying to define it in one small exhibition room will most certainly get somebody angry or offended.

I took some photos in the museum shop, they had really invested in the products and the decor of the place! In the sealing there were huge keys, as you can see, because a locked space is a typical element in a Gothic novel and so are secrets behind locked doors and the heroines are often locked up.

The exhibition ended the 20th of January but the British Library is still worth a visit. First of all, there might be some of those awesome artifacts of Terror & Wonder still left on a discount. Secondly there is still a free exhibition Treasures of the British Library of famous books, there one can see Shakespeare's work and Beowulf manuscript.

Even though the exhibition is no more, London is a goth friendly city. The architecture is worth ogling, since many of London's great buildings represent the Gothic Revival architecture. Close to Charing Cross tube station is Cafe in the Crypt in the crypts of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Me and my friends drank some wine in there before attending a concert in the church. They played Vivaldi and it was an exquisite way to spend one of the nights in London. Classical music has many qualities a goth would appreciate, the drama, the violins, etc. so I do recommend listening to it in beautiful surroundings like the St. Martin-in-the-Fields!

On the weekends there are antique markets. I and my friends went to two, first was in Bermondsay Square on Friday, there were more real antiques and peculiar things. One person was selling three taxidermy ducklings. Their feet were flexible so that one can place them into different poses. Someway I was tempted to buy one but decided a duckling is a bit too cute to my taste, even if it is dead and stuffed.

The second place we went was the Portobello Road Market. There were numerous stalls with all kinds of things from tourist crap to vintage jewelry and antique prints of human anatomy. I bought myself two old prints of animals, goats that are clearly up to no good and disturbing rhinos. They are still in the protecting plastic, I plan to find ominous black frames for them.

We were in London only four days so I did not get to see everything I wanted but these were the things I actually experienced and can recommend to goths. There was also an exhibition of witches and witchcraft in art in the British Museum but it too ended some time ago.

Thanks for reading and next time it is time for The Curious Professor Z's Monthly homework assignment and after that I'll post another Creepy Reads Review of a story by Neil Gaiman!

Adventures in Taxidermy, or at least with a Skull

Last weekend I was visiting my family and as a dinner we had a rabbit. While my father was disemboweling the creature and chattering away about should we give brains and other parts we were not going to eat for the dogs, I started to think about the skull. It would be a pretty little decoration in a house or as a jewellery, so I asked if I could try to boil the head of the dead rabbit. I had never done anything like that before, so I was excited about a new experience. My mother was first against it, because it is quite smelly business. So she insisted that I should put a lot of allspice to the water and it was not smelly at all.

It was not a pretty sight, I must say and that is one of the reasons I did not take any photos of the process. It was just a grey lump in the kettle. People tend to whiten the skulls, but I like it like that, more natural-like.

There are no specific instruction about how long one should boil the head, but for a small creature, like the one I was experimenting with, recommendation was one hour if young mammal and about 3 hours if it died old. I cooked it about two hours and when I was removing flesh with a toothpick the jaw got separated. That is the risk if one cooks the head too long, other parts fell off too, not just soft tissue.

That was not really a problem for me. I preferred it to be easier to remove flesh and get a 3D puzzle than the option of a smelly little skull, if I can't get all soft material out of it. First it was a bit awful and slimy, but then I got used to it and it was rather fun to clean the skull.

Boiling a skull is the easiest way to clean it, if one is trying it for the first time. Other ways are for example maggots or through a process of decay. A third option is dump the skull into a anthill. The little buggers eat everything.

Bizarre art, aka. Greetings from St. Petersburg!

Since I really have nothing of my old projects ready, the art book about renaissance is still not finished and so is with the DIY jewellery, I'm going to post a few pics from St. Petersburg. I was there three days and had a two-day ticket to Hermitage Museum and there were some really bizarre artworks.

In one of those huge rooms the walls were filled with 18th and 19th century paintings, they were all huge and portrayed hounds attacking something. Like a bear or a bewildered horse or a panther or each other. Those paintings were in a way extremely grotesque. The pics are not that good because I was not sure if photographing was allowed. Turned out it was in most rooms.

I also visited the local zoological museum and it was too a bit creepy. There must have been some really enthusiastic taxidermists, since there were everything from house pets to hundreds of penguins. I mean literally, there were several glass boxes filled with them but for some reason I did not take a photo of them. Guess I'm not that big a penguin fan as the Russians  I can't help myself to think that person who went to the South Pole and killed all 75 baby penguins and their parents, stuffed them to shipping boxes and sent to St. Petersburg.

But I did take a picture of a seal with anger management problems and a sad looking baby bear left into a cabinet with no relatives.

Artistic creativity in taxidermy: revealing the inner beast of a seal

Finally two pretty pictures of an excessive decor.

A room in Hermitage