A family of diplodocuses 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 which were originally designed to coincide with the millennium celebrations. These extinct animals were surely deemed suitable monuments in their embodiment of the transitory nature of time in an aura of non-specific reflection.
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 its perennial cycles regardless.
-David Foster
MONVMENTVM MM © Tim Sullivan 2008
Text by Tim Sullivan and David Foster
Hardcover 55 pages full colour 11.4” x 14.2”/ 29 x 36 cm
Edition of 5, price on request
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