A Duck for Mr. Darwin: Evolutionary Thinking and the Theory of Natural Selection

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. 10th April - 20th September 2009
Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick. 7th October - 17th December 2009

Curated by Alessandro Vincentelli

Mark Fairnington exhibited the first painting, Maerdy Tally, from a new series. The painting of Tally, a prize winning stock bull, emerged from research into the lineage of painting animals, looking at the connections between 18th and 19th century English naive paintings of livestock, George Stubbs famous painting Whistlejacket (1762) up to Mark Wallinger's paintings of horses, Race, Class and Sex (1992) and Ghost (2001).

The title “A Duck for Mr. Darwin” was taken from a chapter in David Quamen’s book ‘The Kiwi’s Egg’. In it he describes the incident of the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace sending his senior, Charles Darwin a rare species of Duck from the island of Lombok, Indonesia. It was 1857, two years before the publication of The Origin of Species. Darwin never received the gift, he did however receiver Wallace’s paper (on the transmutation of species) which triggered an intellectual tussle and a race to publish The Origin of Species.

To coincide with Darwin 200, The Struggle to Exist was a group exhibition of contemporary artists exploring the scientific discourse surrounding evolutionary thinking & the theory of natural selection. Professor Richard Dawkins has written of the development of the theory of natural selection “the most important idea ever to occur to a human mind” . 150 years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species there are profound and radical implications to the ideas generated by Darwin and his contemporaries that have been a rich source of inspiration to contemporary visual artists. Using both the gallery and a wider BALTIC context (library/archive and QUAY) this initiative was a project involving commissioned work, exhibition and public events & talks exploring the power of specific ideas to change the world.

Darwin 200 was a national programme of events celebrating Charles Darwin’s scientific ideas and their impact around his two hundredth birthday on 12 February 2009. As well as celebrating the impact of Darwin’s ideas about evolution, Darwin 200 focussed on his approach to the understanding of the natural world, and his outstanding example as a scientist, continues to have on our lives.

The artists included were Tania Kovats, Dorothy Cross, Mark Dion, Andrew Dodds, Mark Fairnington, Ben Jeans Houghton, Charles Avery, Marcus Coates and Conrad Shawcross.

Publication: A Duck for Mr Darwin, Evolutionary Thinking and the Struggle to Exist, BALTIC. ISBN 0-00-867530-9.