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Cornelia Parker: Magna Carta (An Embroidery) Humanitas Visiting Professorships in Contemporary Art European Live Art Archive John Gerrard: Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collections at Oxford Gabriela Albergaria: hither and thitherMark Fairnington: Mantidae
The Ruskin School of Art and Oxford University Museum of Natural History co-organised an exhibition of new paintings by Mark Fairnington, which derived from a research project at the Hope Entomological Collection, second only in size and importance to the national insect collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
The focus of the show was the Museum’s holdings of Mantidae or praying mantises, and each painting depicted a single specimen larger than life. Some of them were increased to a human-sized scale, unleashing powerful anthropomorphic associations, and the exhibition as a whole explored the problematic of the specimen and traditional taxonomic practices.
Commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art in collaboration with Oxford University Museum of Natural History and supported by funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Southern Arts.
