Gen-pets

Gen-pets, by Canadian sculptor Adam Brandejs, consists of 19 plastic packages hung by hooks within a mock store set-up displaying streamlined, mass produced bio-engineered life. Each package consists of 3 layers of vacuum formed plastic surrounding a foam latex animatron: strange animals, grown and altered, by bioengineering, but obviously mammalian.

They are twitching, shaking, clawing, moaing and head-butting their packaging with twist ties to keep them held in place. Feeding tubes supply the creatures with nourishment, as well as electricity for the glowing "fresh strips" and fully working heart monitors.

Brandejs wants to emphasize that these are not plastic toys, but mass produced, copyrighted life; modified for consumption; life wired, up to serve. The animals have been deemed worthless and marketed as midrange children's toys. They are tethered for practicality, not for security, and the cables that bind them demonstrate their relationship of utter dependency and submission immediately upon birth. They are sleeping in their packages and complacently awaiting to join their new home as one more possession, a consumable form of technology, the latest and greatest.

Gen-pet is part of Pulse, an an emerging artist's show curated by Angella Mackey.

At Interaccess, until Saturday, August 6, 2005.

Related: Your Kidney Supermarket.