A curious curatorial decision marked the inaugural National Gallery of Victoria Triennel, featuring 100 artists from 32 countries, including an installation of 100 massive skulls (note: not those of the participating artists).

Amidst other artists, designers, technologists, animators and architects, Australian sculptor Ron Mueck’s largest ever work to date still stands out, providing a chilling ambient atmosphere for more conventional museum pieces.

Titled Mass, it represents “a somber study of mortality, and an extension of [the artist’s] hyperrealistic sculptural practice, [drawing] from the biological structure of the skull, regarded by him as extraordinary facets of humanity.”

Made of fiberglass and resin, the skulls are around three feet (or: one meter) tall, but many are piled up on top of one another, reaching toward gallery ceilings above.

This exhibition in Melbourne is free and open to the public and will continue through late April — images by Tom Ross and Sean Fennessey.

Creatures large and small seem to have eaten their way out of the confinement of everyday items like rolling pins, axes, pianos and chairs in the hands of Montreal-based artist Maskull Lasserre. Previously known for his incredible skulls carved into the pages of books, Lasserre now reveals unexpected life (and death) within wooden objects.

Lasserre has carved crow skeletons, vulture skulls, rats, beetles and even a human ear out of found objects, often stacking more than one item together to produce the illusion that the sculpture is emerging from the wood. According to his CV, Lasserre’s sculptures “explore the unexpected potential of the everyday and its associated structures of authority, class, and value.”

“Elements of nostalgia, allegory, humor and the macabre are incorporated into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected.”

In a two-part video interview with Liana Voia, Lasserre explains “When the remnants of life are imposed on an object, and that’s true especially with the carving work that I do, it infers a past history or a previous life that had been lived, so again where people see my work as macabre, I often see it as hopeful, as the remnants of a life.”

“Despite the fact that the life has ended, at least that life had a beginning and middle as well, so often by imparting these bodily elements to inanimate objects it reclaims or reanimates them in a virtual way.”

A pile of street cocaine mixed with gelatin is sculpted into a life-sized replica of a human skull in ‘Ecce Animal,’ a statement on humankind’s lingering tendency to lose control of ourselves. Artist Diddo created the piece as a private commission using street cocaine obtained the usual way – illegally – and declines to reveal the confidential details of the hows and whys.

Diddo had the cocaine tested at a laboratory before using it, and pharmacists and the unnamed facility discovered that mixed in with the pure cocaine was a number of other ingredients including “Phenacetin, Caffeine, Paracetamol, and a relative large percentage of sugars, most probably Mannitol or Inositol.”

The piece was initially released with no information other than a companion poem written by the artist, which reads in part, “It is frightening to look at the face of our animal side laid bare by comfortable excess; the spoils of aggression. But what exactly is it about this image that is so confronting?”

The artist reveals to Bullett that despite its initial appearance, Ecce Animal isn’t meant to be a statement on the destructiveness of addiction, but rather about our inherent nature as human beings. “We have temporarily outgrown the intended uses for our animal instincts. This leaves us in an uncomfortable conundrum. Where can we safely store them  until we need them again?”

What bizarre and terrifying ‘treasures’ from long-gone ancient civilizations are still hidden in crypts, caves and deep within the earth? Most archaeologists may spend their days painstakingly brushing sand off pieces of pottery, but occasionally, they unearth evidence of the darker side of humanity – cannibalism, sacrifice, mass murder, deadly paranoia about vampires and witches, and even chemical warfare. These 15 archaeological finds of ancient human remains are among the most grisly, frightening and fascinating.

Vampire of Venice

Among the corpses of medieval plague victims was one very curious find: a skull with a brick shoved so forcefully between its jaws, they were broken. The technique was used on suspected vampires in Europe during this time, especially when natural biological processes after death resulted in dark blood-like liquid streaming from the mouth. Researchers have determined that not only was this elderly woman feared a vampire after her death, she may have been accused of witchcraft before she met her end. Most people didn’t live to be her age, estimated at 60-71 years, and many medieval Europeans believed that the devil gave the elderly powers to cheat death. Older women were particularly suspect because it was assumed that they had little to live for, and were vulnerable to offers of power.

The Screaming Mummies

Imagine opening a sarcophagus to find a mummy that seems to be screaming for all eternity. In the past, when ‘screaming mummies‘ were discovered, archaeologists assumed that they must have been buried alive or killed in some other painful manner. Now, however, they usually agree that mummies are commonly found with their jaws open due to their heads falling back after death. The most famous screaming mummy is Unknown Man E, an Egyptian mummy found in 1886, who could be the murderous son of Ramses III. Another is even more shocking, with its hands covering its face in apparent terror; it was among the remains of the Chachapoya Indians of Peru.

Pile of Headless Vikings

Evidence of a shocking massacre was discovered when archaeologists unearthed 51 thousand-year-old skulls – along with another pit containing their headless bodies – in Weymouth, UK. Found in 2009, these young male Vikings were brutally slain sometime between 910 and 1030 CE. Analysis of their teeth confirmed that they were from Scandinavia. They were likely war captives of the Anglo-Saxons, executed by having their heads hacked off.

Neanderthal Cannibals

The bones of twelve neanderthals found in a cave in Spain were cut and snapped, indicating that they were likely ‘processed’ by fellow neanderthals as food. The possible family group, which included three adult males, three adult females, three adolescents, two children and an infant, is one of the most significant examples of cannibalism among neanderthals. “There are many different markings in many different bones in all 12 individuals, including traditional cut marks to disarticulate bones and remove muscle insertions, snapping and fracturing of long bones to extract the marrow,”researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox told LiveScience.

Bathhouse Baby Disposal

How and why were the bones of nearly 100 infants discarded like trash in a late Roman, early Byzantine sewer beneath a bathhouse in Israel? Found in 1988 in Ashkelon, the remains indicate that the babies died before three days of age, and show no signs of disease or skeletal malformation. While scholars hypothesized that the babies were girls, since female infanticide was common during that time, tests have since shown that many were male. The reasoning behind their death is still a mystery.

The First Leper

The earliest archaeological evidence of leprosy is found in a 4,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in India in 2009. Leprosy is difficult to study because the bacteria that causes it is tricky to culture for research, and scientists are still unsure of exactly when and where it originated. This skeleton was not only the oldest leper ever found, it was also the first evidence of leprosy in ancient India, supporting the idea that the disease migrated between Africa and Asia during a period of urbanization, growing population density and new trade routes.

Murdered Bog Bodies

The peat bogs of northwestern Europe have turned out to be one of the richest sources of ancient human remains in the world, preserving bodies so perfectly that they sometimes still contain blood and stomach contents. ‘Bog bodies‘ such as the Grauballe Man, pictured, date from 8,000 B.C.E. to the early medieval period. It seems that these people were not buried in the peat bogs, nor did they simply die there – they died violently. Researchers believe they were most likely sacrificed, or executed as punishment for crimes or perceived flaws.

Skulls Used as Cups

Three human skulls found in Gough’s Cave, Somerset, England were carefully worked into the shape of bowls, indicating that they were used to drink from. At 14,700 years old, these are the oldest skull cups ever discovered, and they were surrounded by other human remains that had been snapped to get to the marrow inside, suggesting cannibalism.

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Frightening Archaeological Finds 15 Odd Human Remains

What do you do with 497 obsolete VHS tapes? Noah Scalin ripped them apart and made them into a giant three-dimensional skull-shaped art installation entitled ‘Dead Media‘. The proprietor of Skull-A-Day has been making a skull a day, every day, since June 4th, 2007.

Scalin was commissioned to create the project by Tidewater Community College Visual Arts Center, which supplied him some of the video tapes. Others came from friends and his own collection. Some of the titles that can be spotted among the destroyed mass are notably obscure, like ‘Valdez Winter Update 10-25-89, Exxon Company U.S.A.’

Says Scalin, “In the spirit of the famous painting The Ambassadors by Hand [sic] Holbein the Younger, the skull was created to only look correct from one point and is actually quite distorted in real life.”

Other skull projects that have been featured on the site were made of turnips, scrap metal, a pile of books, flower petals, bullet holes and grated crayons.