Monvmentvm MM by Tim Sullivan

Image Tim Sullivan copyright 2008

A family of Megalosaurus amble through the overgrown parkland of a Welsh visitor attraction. Sullivan’s camera captures them like the breathless wildlife photographer hidden amongst the foliage. The Jurassic Park moment is short lived. These are one of the many regional edutainments funded by the millennium commission. These extinct dinosaurs were surely deemed suitable millennium monuments in their embodiment of the transitory nature of time in an aura of non-specific reflection.

Looking through the Sullivan’s findings reveals the beguiling variety of monuments and projects deemed suitable to impress upon the viewer a similar sense of nostalgia. Sullivan’s photos allow us to reassess this recent historical spectacle. The millennium commission may have invested somewhere in the region of two billion pounds on countrywide initiatives but after eight years many appear discarded and forgotten. In this way an image of drab plaster dinosaurs re-casts itself into an elegiac narrative to a spectacle driven culture. Extinct creatures left to inhabit the corners of the country parks in South Wales.

In the same image tree buds begin to blossom. Nature continues the same perennial cycles regardless.

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Tim Sullivan's project Monvmentvm mm is exhibited in London as part of the University of Westminster's BA photographic degree. For info see http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-1864

BA PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS
Free Range
T1, Old Truman Brewery
Brick Lane,
London E1

Private View: 19 June 6pm-10pm
Exhibition Continues: 20-23 June 10am-7pm (weekdays) 10am - 6pm (weekend)