Representations of animals are ubiquitous in our culture, from advertising hoardings, to newspapers and television, to hundreds of thousands of images uploaded every day to the internet. Human beings, it seems, are obsessed by the image of the animal. Animals are also consistently subjects of public controversy, whether in relation to animal rights, agro-industrialisation, conservation or genetic engineering. Recently, an expanding field of animal studies has sought to question humankind’s relation to the animal world, challenging long-held humanist assumptions about the animal’s external relation to man. In the writings of Derrida, Deleuze and other post-Heideggerians, the animal has become a potent figure of speculative inquiry, offering radically new conceptions of ethics and agency for all species. Since the 1970s, artists, too, have engaged with the animal, rethinking traditional categories of representation to challenge human-animal relations as well as the nature of c

Read More: Exhibition presents works by artists who question humankind’s relation to the animal world