George Stubbs: 'all done from Nature'

MK Gallery and the Paul Mellon Centre invite proposals from academics, artists, independent scholars and curators for contributions to a day-long conference on the occasion of the major monographic exhibition, George Stubbs: 'all done from Nature', which will be held at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes from 12 October 2019 to 26 January 2020. The exhibition presents the first significant overview of Stubbs’s work in Britain for more than 30 years and brings together over 80 paintings, drawings and publications from the National Gallery’s iconic Whistlejacket to pieces that have never been seen in public.

A major theme of the exhibition is anatomy. The show includes forensic drawings by Stubbs of humans, horses, tigers and hens at different stages of dissection. This greatest coming together of art and science in British art will be set alongside the actual skeleton of the legendary racehorse Eclipse which Stubbs depicted on several occasions.

Contributions will take the form of 20-minute presentations and may address subjects and themes relevant to the exhibition, such as anatomy, extinction, animal studies, sporting art, patronage and breeding, empire and discovery. The focus of individual contributions may be art-historical, museological, artistic, theoretical or reflective, but all will be expected to have an interrogative and critical dimension. The day is intended to facilitate creative dialogues between the historic and the contemporary, experience and theory, art and politics, and across and between disciplines, so we would welcome contributions that created opportunities for such exchanges.

Proposals should take the form of a written statement of no more than 500 words, stating the research questions, the means by which these will be addressed, and the relevance of the proposer’s research, practice and/or experience in addressing these questions. A short, one-paragraph biography should also be included at the bottom of the proposal (this is in addition to the 500 words allotted for the proposal).

Deadline for proposals: 27 September 2019.

Please send Word or PDF documents to Thomas Knowles at [email protected].