‘My Previous Life as an Ape’ is a solo exhibition (Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London, 2015). The title is from Kafka’s short story ‘A Report for an Academy’ in which an ape, who has adopted a human life, presents testimony of his earlier animal existence. The exhibition comprises 'All Rise' - an HD split screen video work (7’30) and three sets of images titled Mimics I – III: photo-etchings, drawings and C-Type photographs respectively. All the work was realised through collaborative ventures that brought mimetic behaviours stemming from outside contemporary art into relation with visual art practices.
‘All Rise’ involved collaborations with The Royal Central College of Speech and Drama, the new Perdekamp Emotional Method of Acting, Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance and the writer John Harrington (who produced a parallel text). For Mimics I, Coutts subjugated barristers headed notepaper claiming an authority for mimetic animals. Mimics II involved the court artist Sian Frances drawing a criminal lookalike from memory after Coutts’ re-enactment of his arrest at Lincoln’s Inn. Coutts’ approach was to record mimetic activities through restaging copying behaviours and events. The video became container for mimicked representations presented in short vertical bursts across the split screen.
‘All Rise’ has since been shown at ‘Intersecting Practices of Contemporary Printmaking in the UK and China’ (2015); IMPACT 9, Hangzhou; China Academy of Arts Museum; ‘Intersecting Practices of International Contemporary Arts’, Hunan University; Art 9 Gallery and “Conjunctively Evolving" Contemporary Arts from China and UK at Yun Contemporary Arts Center, Shanghai (all 2016). Coutts presented this research at conferences ‘Visualising the Animal’, Cumbria University (2015); Potatoes and Stones’, Goldsmiths University and ‘Art as Research’, North Wales School of Art and Design (both 2016). ‘Mimics 1’ is with an accompanying text is featured in the journal ‘Tierstudien’- Mimesis, Mimikry, Mimese (2017).