SINGAPORE — You are likely familiar with photographer Ernest Goh’s vivid, colourful portraits of live fish, fowl and the odd orangutan or two. But in his latest exhibition, the animal-loving artist worked with fauna of the non-breathing, museum collection variety.

Images of orangutan and tapir skulls and specimens of dead birds and insects are to be found in Breakfast At 8 Jungle At 9, which is incidentally the first exhibition held at Objectifs Centre For Photography And Filmmaking’s new space at Middle Road, which was formerly Sculpture Square.

Taking the form of stickers or prints, these specimens were taken from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, and the exhibition itself is an extension of a project he did with the museum — a 12m-long wall at the lobby entrance featuring design motifs based on the specimens.

The intriguing title is likewise linked to the world of museums and natural history — it’s a phrase from a letter written by British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace back in 1854 describing his daily routine. Wallace had lived in Bukit Timah, which was his base as he went about exploring the Malay Archipelago, discovering and collecting new specimens of various animals. This eventually led to the theory of natural selection (together with his more popular rival, Charles Darwin).

Echoing Wallace’s “methodical way of working”, Goh emphasised the idea of repetition in the exhibition. On the walls are smaller variations of his work at the museum — similar colourful prints using photographs of specimens to create patterns that look like decorative Peranakan tiles from afar — a nod to his own roots, he said.

But the central work is his interactive installation Time To Wrap Up, where visitors can cover sculptural objects with stickers of animal specimens.

Goh has printed around 32,000 stickers of 81 different species, some of which date back to the early 1900s. These are laid out on a platform mimicking a scientific display table. “I want people to come and discover the species themselves, like how Wallace discovered them,” said Goh.

The sculptural objects themselves, covered in white tape, are a motley mix, including not just a variety of animals (including a gorilla at the back of a decommissioned military land rover) but also a piano, an object-filled shopping trolley and a CCTV camera, a comment on how wildlife is scrutinised more than ever in Singapore, and even culled, said Goh

The act of covering objects with (dead) wildlife stickers alludes to Goh’s own childhood hobby of completing the Panini football sticker books as well as Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s famous project where stickers are used to cover a room. But it is also an extension of a book project Goh did last year called The Gift Book, where he used insect motifs to create wrapping paper as commentary on the idea of nature as a kind of wrapping for the earth itself.

The former photojournalist may have only begun his animal-centric photography quite recently, but he has been fascinated with them from a very young age. “I had so much history as a kid interacting with nature,” Goh said, recalling how, during the 1980s, he would spend a lot of time at his grandmother’s house, which was a kampung village in Siglap. He would play fighting spiders (“A kid thing to do in the ’80s”) and also with the chickens that roamed around.

“If you interact with animals as a child, you’ll grow up loving animals as an adult,” he said.

Incidentally, while Breakfast At 8 Jungle At 9 (and his commission for the natural history museum) is his first time working with dead animals for an art project, it’s not the first time he has worked with dead animals per se.

In fact, he knows a bit of taxidermy, after a project as a Master’s student at Goldsmiths in London where he worked with a taxidermist back in 2008. It was a skill he has taken back to Singapore where he still dabbles in it until today (he has mounted four birds). “I was just drawn to it. I liked that I could tell so much even with a dead animal.”

Breakfast At 8 Jungle At 9 runs until July 19 at Objectifs, 155 Middle Road. Free admission. For more information, visit http://www.objectifs.com.sg/