Speculative Taxidermy

A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICON75

FIGURE 2.1 Mark Fairnington, The Parrot Plant, 2009. Oil on panel. 70 × 40 cm.

antihistorical document-maker: one engaged in the negotiation between
the conceptual and the sensory, operating in a web of aesthetic contra-
dictions in which animal objectification is key.
Importantly, the artist’s critical revisionism of natural history illus-
tration is substantially problematized in a series called Flora, in which