Philippa Bentley Print “Monarch and Huhu”

Archival print on fine art paper

Image size in millimetres: 575 x 465
Limited edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist in pencil below image.

The artist writes about this print “I love visiting natural history collections and marvelling at the dinosaur fossils, giant bird eggs and beautiful, colourful exotic butterfly collections, one hundred year old plant specimens and more. I believe our natural history collections are as much about our social history and the context of the time, as they are about the natural flora and fauna preserved; the collector as well as the collected. I use natural history collections as a metaphor for presenting my themes and thoughts. In this way my artwork can be simply enjoyed aesthetically yet functions on different levels, with both personal or social meaning; layer on layer, and often includes an image within an image."

A fascination with insects, that’s lasted from playing in her sprawling childhood garden and in the creek down at the bottom of the bush, inspired Philippa’s “Insects and Memories” series. This is a series of insect collections presented as museum boxes. Bentley says, “just as a butterfly is caught and preserved in a specimen box, so do we capture our experiences and archive them as our memories. We are all collectors of memories, experiences, sensations, fragments of days that layer us up and make us who we are.”

Like this Philippa Bentley print? Other prints that go with Monarch and Huhu by Philippa Bentley are for sale in these collections at New Zealand's specialist art print gallery since 1966:

Philippa Bentley Prints
Editions by Contemporary NZ Printmakers
New Prints in Stock (NZ)
Animal Pictures