In The Family Jane Dodd positions the human species within the Animal Kingdom. She began this project with an exhibition at Te Uru in June 2019, portraying our closest relatives, the taxonomic order of Primates. The current exhibition at Masterworks looks wider still. Character and narrative are given to humans, fellow simians, other mammals, fish, molluscs, worms, insects, sponges, and other animals alike. It is certainly not pure science, license is taken, comedy is king and story-telling trumps fact. But the device gives a framework to assert that humans are just another twig of a gloriously rich and diverse tree.
