THE barbed wire fence strewn with pig skins and heads stretches on for 2km against a bleak New Zealand landscape, a confronting and disturbing sight for passers-by—and for viewers of ‘Meat Fence’, an exhibition opening this week at the Perth Centre of Photography.
Photographer Justin Spiers describes the meat fence as a bizarre collection of hunters’ trophies collected over 12 years by a small rural community in East Otago on NZ’s South Island.
“I became aware of the site though a curator at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery when he related the story of a Japanese friend who was horrified on viewing it”, he explains. “It sounded beautifully grotesque. I had to find it.”
“we are all implicit in the mistreatment of animals to some degree”
The exhibition, a collaboration between Spiers and art academic Jonathan W Marshall, challenges the mainstream utilitarian approach to farming, hunting and killing animals by showing a literal close-up of its brutality and devastating environmental impact. Spiers’ collection of photos combines “depictions of the flesh of deceased animals with tropes of landscape photography, at times confusing boundaries between the two”, and is accompanied by a video work by Marshall.
Amidst debate over shark killing at WA beaches and Denmark’s slaying and public butchery of a surplus young giraffe, Spiers says the art of Meat Fence is not overtly political, but will prompt people to reflect on attitudes towards animals they often taken for granted.
“The overriding interest we have in eating animals is economics and the pleasure we get from the taste of their flesh, and we justify the suffering of farmed animals for this outcome,” he explains as an example. “The bias is always towards the human.”
He believes his exhibition has appeal for everyone because, “I realise that we are all implicit in the mistreatment of animals to some degree”.
Meat Fence opened February 13 and runs till March 16 at the Perth Centre of Photography, 100 Aberdeen St, Northbridge. Admission is free.
by ALICIA PERERA
Perth Voice Interactive 
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