The National Museum of Ireland (Natural History) and the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, jointly presented Dignified Kings Play Chess on Fine Green Silk in 2007, a book and exhibition project by Irish artist Karl Grimes. The body of photographs, drawings, texts and sound works were made during Grimes’s artist-in-residence year at the Natural History Museum, then celebrating its 150th anniversary.

Here, we present a selection from the exhibition’s Taxum Totem series. These larger than life and richly hued animal portraits re-awaken the Dead Zoo’s inhabitants - releasing them from the dusty confines of their Victorian glass museum cabinets into the light of a contemporary world, set free from their taxonomic rank and taxidermal stasis.
Grimes’s images present a gallery of new animal celebrities, not posed in studio shots but photographed in situ in the museum. Looked at carefully, the museum’s architecture, its tiered structure, the cast ironwork, the glass cases are here traced and reflected in their staring eyes.

The title, Dignified Kings Play Chess on Fine Green Silk, is a mnemonic - a phrase used to remember the Linnaean taxonomic order - Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.

A full-colour limited edition publication accompanies the exhibition, with texts by Martin Kemp, Stephanie McBride, David Norris and Nigel Monaghan. Available from bookshops at the National Museum of Ireland, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, and Deyrolle, Paris. ISBN 978-0-9552388-3-3