Aimee Sullivan

“I am a recently graduated student from Papanui High School in Christchurch. For the majority of my school life I spent every day creating art in the art room at school and I plan on studying fine arts and art history in the foreseeable future. Since a very young age I have shared a close relationship with animals. This exposure I have endured with animals since I was a child is in no way ‘normal’; my pets ranging from a peacock to a pig to a pet rat which shared my first name. With a mother who is infinitely absorbed with the wellbeing of all animals (whether they be our own pets or a stray bird she has rescued), and a father whose bushy, white beard may resemble some type of undomesticated creature, my belief of there being no hierarchy between animals and humans was shaped. In my work, I want to stray from depicting a bloody, wounded animal or a sad orangutan without a home. Rather than have my artwork be shocking in a way of showing human kind's gory impact, I want to communicate a lighter sense of where our species can harmoniously progress to. I don't mean this in the sense that we should see ourselves as equal to every animal, it is obvious that a spider monkey has just as little place in a law firm as a lawyer does swinging from trees in a tropical rainforest. I think it is vital for humans to recognise that we are not above any animal, we are simply living alongside them.”