A Duck, For Mr Darwin

Contributors: Charles Avery, Marcus Coates, Dorothy Cross, Mark Dion, Andrew Dodds, Mark Fairnington, Ben Jeans Houghton, Tania Kovats, Conrad Shawcross

A Duck for Mr. Darwin is a group exhibition of nine contemporary artists exploring evolutionary thinking and the theory of natural selection.

Transforming the Mead Gallery, the exhibition will feature sculpture, drawing, painting, film and installation. Focusing on the legacy of Charles Darwin’s ideas, A Duck for Mr Darwin is informed by the spirit of experimentation which was so distinctive to the time in which he lived.

The mindset of the Victorian naturalist and his contemporaries, their sense of scientific experimentation and genuine wonder at their respective discoveries are shared by several of the artists in the exhibition. Ideas of isolated, closed worlds of meaning and ordered systems recur throughout, as does the location of the Galapagos Islands. Several of the artists’ visited the Islands and have made work as a result. These remarkable islands were pivotal to the story of the development of Darwin’s theory and have continued to exert a fascination to many.

The art mixes fact and fiction, experimentation and observation, methods of display and personal research. Collectively these artists reveal facets of Darwin’s extraordinary ideas. The exhibition presents work by nine international contemporary artists including a number of new commissions – a large working wormery by Tania Kovats, a museum tableau on the early Victorian explorers by Mark Dion and a new sound work by Andrew Dodds.

The title references the story of an exchange between the young naturalists Alfred Russel Wallace who sent a particular specimen, a domestic duck from the island of Lombok to Darwin in 1857. Within a year a second parcel arrived from the Malay jungle containing Wallace’s short twenty page essay on species variation. This package proved to be the catalyst precipitating the publishing of Darwin’s monumental theory – the book we now know as the Origin of Species.

A Duck for Mr. Darwin has been curated by Alessandro Vincentelli and devised to coincide with the Darwin 200 programme of celebrations and events.

The Guardian review of this show at the Baltic

Curator’s Tour

Tue 24 Nov 6.30pm FREE

Join Alessandro Vincentelli, curator of A Duck for Mr. Darwin, for a tour of the show which marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Gallery Assistant Tours

Mead Gallery Assistants offer whistle stop tours of the exhibition every Monday and Wednesday at 1pm and 4pm.

Warwick Connections

Introducing the work of other departments of the University of Warwick in connection with the Mead’s exhibition programme

Music for Worms
University of Warwick Music Centre
Wed 11 Nov, 6.30pm – 7.30pm
FREE
For more than 40 years, Darwin conducted experiments to identify the characteristics of earthworms. His experiments included playing music to worms, to assess their ability to hear. The Music Centre will play a short concert of music to see if the response of the earthworms in the Mead is any different to that of their nineteenth century forebears.

Explaining the World: How Science Works
John Ellis, Emeritus Professor, Biological Sciences
The New Space
Thu 26 Nov, 6.30pm – 7.30pm
FREE but places are limited so please reserve a seat through Box Office
This talk, centred on theories of evolution, derives from a set of lectures by Professor Ellis aimed at first year undergraduates in Biology. They aim to help students discover how to think, by discussing the considerations that should be borne in mind when formulating views about the nature of the world. These considerations apply not just to scientists but to artists and anyone who thinks about the world we inhabit. This talk will be of particular interest to young people who would like a taster of how they will be encouraged to think about ideas at University.

See also The University of Warwick Art Collection