Neil Pardington's photograph Mammal Attic #1, Canterbury Museum, shows a room (barely) containing a taxidermied elephant with an ominous tear in its shoulder, and in front of it a shark – its fin visible behind a set of steel shelves.

The wooden crates, shelves and scrunched together cloths in this image suggest the activities of preserving, cataloguing and caring for the curious miscellany of objects deemed worthy of exhibition in New Zealand's national institutions.