Return of Gray Rabbit

The original series of photos were taken in 1984 – these in turn were inspired by a fruit scone which had a smiling face when it emerged from the oven at 37 Union Street Dundee – home of DATA (Daily Action Time Archive) and The Attic Archive  – its appearance during a period when many smile magazines were being produced worldwide led to its spontaneous naming – ‘the smile scone’ – now preserved at Dundee University Archives along with the photo-portraits of friends of Pete Horobin taken with the smile scone. 

Gray Rabbit was a childhood toy of Pete Horobin and resided in The Attic Archive during the DATA decade 1980 to 1990 – Gwen Bowles - nee Boath – close friend and collaborator of Pete Horobin took Gray Rabbit to live with her and her growing family for 40 years before introducing him to Dundee University Archives where he now resides newly attired in red waistcoat and gold bowtie skilfully tailored by Anne Lyal.

Gray Rabbit photo-portraits is both a sentimental and nostalgic retelling of personal histories as well as a playful satire of DATA actions 40 years ago – whereas the smile scone photo-portraits was an analogue work in keeping with a pre-digital era Return of Gray Rabbit embraces contemporary accessibility to digital technology – the smart phone and the fashion of taking ‘selfies’.

As much as possible this new series of digital photo-portraits will ask participants to take their own photograph with Gray Rabbit however – there are a few people who either cannot physically handle a phone camera or do not own one – in such cases they have been photographed by someone else