Animality: A Fairy Story

Fantastic exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery which looked at our relationship with animals.

This show combined contemporary art with older examples under some loose themes. I loved the links it made and the great use of illustration. There were 70 contributors. It won me over straight away as the first thing I looked at was the Durer print of a rhinoceros!

I loved the animal and bird feet prints which took you round the show and the clever use of the old cartoon of Animal Farm alongside various editions of the book. It was all so well thought out and presented.

There were some wonderful things. I liked Stephen Balkenhol’s figures carved from one block of wood particularly a man with a birds head. Also Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs wildlife photographs which turned out to be of museum panoramas with taxidermy animals.

Other nice older pieces were some of Maria Sibylla Merian’s illustrations as they’d recently been featured in a show at the Queen’s Gallery. Also J J Grandville’s caricatures of people as animals form 1842.

I think my favourite thing was an installation called “Mouse Hole” by Maurizio Cattelan which was a tiny back lit door at floor level with a small bucket outside and a chattering noise coming from it! It took a while to work out where the noise was coming from!

Closes on 17 December 2016.

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