‘Dippy on Tour’ exhibition at Dorset County Museum

In Spring 2018 the Natural History Museum began its nationwide tour of their famous Diplodocus skeleton (affectionately known as Dippy) with the first venue being the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. I was asked by the Jurassic Coast Team to be one of four artists to showcase their work alongside the skeleton as part of their ‘Naturally Curious’ exhibition. The idea was to link ‘Dippy’ to the local ‘Jurassic’ rocks and fossils and to incorporate not only the obvious scientific and geological aspects of this but also to look at the ways in which artists had been inspired by the local geology.

For my contribution I chose to exhibit four works of art. Two were created by groups of children working with me at local events and two were my own pieces. The large 3D ‘Mortality Bed’ Ammonite sculpture was created at the ‘Seaton Jurassic’ centre in Sidmouth and the ‘Slicing Through Time’ Ammonite sculpture was made over two days by visitors to the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival the previous year. 

For my two pieces I chose to create a 3D Ammonite sculpture entitled ‘Resurfacing’ which was left partly unfinished so that people could see the construction underneath and I also created an Ichthyosaur skeleton sculpture entitled ‘A Complex Jigsaw’ based on the fossils discovered by Mary Anning here on the Dorset Coast.

The exhibition was a great success with over 150,000 visitors, way more than expected as this was only the first venue on the tour. The opening night of the exhibition was an incredible spectacle with an orchestra set up beneath the skeleton which was lit up especially for the event. I felt incredibly privileged to have been asked to take part in this project and to create work which hung alongside such a famous exhibit and one which I had been fascinated by since I saw it first in the main hall of the Natural History Museum as an 8 year old boy.