European Hare

European Hare

European Hare was taken while Peter Peryer was on the Henderson House Residency in Alexandra (2008). Aware of the way that rabbits—introduced by humans to this landscape—had indelibly altered Central Otago, Peryer’s study of this taxidermy hare ponders the control people exercise over animals and how this plays into notions of reality and fantasy.

During this period, Peryer reflected on a coincidental occurrence where a local friend’s cat killed two rabbits over two days, which he described as “a gruesome yet riveting sight.” Though his fascination with mortality is evident in many of his earlier works—a fish just caught; goat skins drying on a farm fence; a stiff bloated steer, belly side up, on the side of the road—Peryer was unable to capture this scene.

Later that same week, another friend visited him and brought him this taxidermy albino hare, which Peryer promptly took just this one shot of, instantly recognising it as a ‘keeper’, a term the artist used for photographs chosen to be printed for exhibition. Instead of capturing the actual moment the rabbits died, he photographed something that represented it. European Hare is part of an ongoing series the artist made to skew viewers’ perception of the truth, prompting us to consider if what we see is real or contrived. Similarly, he draws attention to our relationship with the animal kingdom and the way that animals are viewed: not as they are in their natural environments, but through our unapologetically biased human gaze.

— Sian van Dyk, 2023