Animal skulls, flesh-eating beetles and good honest pessimism: the life and work of Bruce Mahalski. Video / Frank Film
If a stranger turned up on the doorstep with the skull of a dead animal, most people would be disturbed. What’s more, if they had a colony of flesh-eating beetles in their garage, they’d be terrified.
Bruce Mahalski is not disturbed or terrified by either of those things. But heis disturbed by optimism.
“Optimism tends to sort of lead to more complacency and less action,” the Dunedin resident tells Frank Film. “People who have hope don’t tend to make good activists.”
Activism is infused through Mahalski’s multiple occupations. The 62-year-old is an artist, sculptor, collector, museum curator, and cartoonist.
“I’m pumping out information like a machine gun,” he says, in the hope that “some of what I do gets through”.
Dunedin artist Bruce Mahalski has turned his home into a natural mystery museum. Photo / Frank Film
Mahalski says it’s the dark side of humanity that interests him, because “you’ve got to know bad to know good”. To this end, his creations can be somewhat unnerving.
As the centrepiece of his work, Mahalski has turned his home into a public museum. The Dunedin Museum of Natural Mystery showcases “anything that’s out of the ordinary”, according to Mahalski.
What used to be Mahalski’s master bedroom is now a “mammal wing”. Sitting among preserved skeletons of various species are a taxidermied lamb with two bodies, a calf with two heads, and a steer with an extra horn protruding from its forehead.
The dining room, now an “everything wing”, showcases a door with a small peephole salvaged from a secure unit at Seacliff asylum, and an old cane from Otago Boys’ High School. “Plus some other bits and pieces that people used to beat their children with,” says Mahalski.
Mahalski’s living room acts as a gallery for his bone sculptures. His works use the skeletal remains of any species – including rats, rabbits, pigs, and even humans.
“This piece is a memorial to all the coral reefs that we’re losing through climate change,” says Mahalski, gesturing to the bust of a woman shaped from thousands of pieces of crushed bone.
'Bones are not negative': Mahalski's unique museum draws intrigue. Photo / Frank Film
“Everything I do, really, is about getting people to realise that we’re part of nature,” says Mahalski. “I want people to realise [that] bones are not negative ... they’re not scary things.”
Mahalski sources his bones organically – collecting them from farms, under houses, and having some dropped off by locals who find them.
Out in Mahalski’s garage lives a crucial element of his operation. His colony of hide beetles, otherwise known as the ‘flesh-eating beetle’, lives in a secure tank.
“I love these guys,” says Mahalski, “they’re just so industrious, and they clean up bones for me.”
Mahalski's murals and sculptures are spread throughout Dunedin. Photo / Frank Film
On a Royal Terrace building are a pair of badgers – an ode to Mahalski’s parents going badger-watching on their first date. “They got married and I’m the product,” says Mahalski, “so badgers, yeah!”
Another mural on the corner of Highgate shows a pair of lemurs. “The neighbours complained twice about those lemurs’ eyes, they were a bit too freaky, so twice I had to dull them down a bit,” says Mahalski.
Mahalski says he has been threatened and trolled, with some people complaining that he is covering the town with his art.
He’s also not particularly welcome at the Dunedin Railway Station. “I tend to get hassled by the cops if they see me near the railway station. They think I might be up to something.
“They might be right,” says Mahalski, “I figure, if not me, who else is going to do it?”
Museum committee chair Nic Rawlence says Mahalski’s works “inform the debates that we need to have”.
“We’ve got to do a better job of looking after the environment and being humans,” says Mahalski. “I’d like to keep both animals and my children going.”
Back at his home, a curtain separates Mahalski’s living quarters from the rest of the museum. He currently lives in the spare room at the back of the house, but soon that too will become a gallery, and Mahalski will move to the storage room.
