This video/animation installation consists of four monitors stacked up against a wall, on each of which playing a different animated sequence of a domestic animal (cat, dog, rabbit, bird) going through the motions of daily life in captivity - (scratching, sleeping, jumping up at the screen, whimpering etc.)

Pet shop explores several themes:

The idea of animation/iconic representation being a common cultural method of inducing audience empathy toward inanimate objects.

The perception of real time and constructed time. Though the sequences appear to be real time sequences where much of the ‘action’ is banal and uneventful (sleeping, staring etc) - animation is of course being one of the most synthetic depictions of time.

The dynamics of watching, and how in a pet shop as opposed to gallery space the relationship between the watcher and the watched can be reciprocal (if you bang on the glass and get their attention), whereas in the Pet shop installation, any perception of the subject looking back and acknowledging the presence of the viewer, is completely delusional.