boredomresearch are exhibiting their video installation The Ultimate Fate of Jeremy Fisher at Wray Castle, Cumbria in the exhibition The Women of Wray Castle: Convention and Control from 2 March – 25 November 2018.
The animation exploits Beatrix Potter’s magical aesthetic to introduce a major issue of our time that would undoubtedly have received her own attention and concern. Amphibian mass extinction caused by fungal infection, raises the issue of lost insight, like Potter’s own work in mycology which failed to receive its deserved recognition. In this artwork boredomresearch revisit Jeremy in a world now full of lethal fungal spores.
The frog we see posed as Mr. Jeremy Fisher is the last known living Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum). As a result of an infectious disease in amphibians called Chytridiomycosis, which is invariably fatal, they became extinct in 2016. In The Ultimate Fate of Jeremy Fisher, this wonderful tree frog which used to live in the mountains of central Panama, now quietly contemplates the disease which has rendered its species extinct.
This artwork was commissioned by the National Trust in 2017 and was developed in collaboration with the Garden Wildlife Health project at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).