Strange Creatures put on display at UCL

'Strange Creatures: The art of unknown animals' is a new exhibition at the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. By examining the world of animal representations, the exhibition explores how imagery has been used to bring newly discovered animals into the public eye. From the earliest days of exploration, visual depictions in artworks, books, the media and even toys have been essential in representing exotic creatures that are alien to people at home. With displays created by palaeontologists, historians of science, exploration and art at UCL, this cross-discipline exhibition creates a diverse exploration of animal representation set amongst the museum's permanent displays. Strange Creatures centres upon George Stubbs' painting of a kangaroo, which was created following Captain Cook's first Pacific "Voyage of Discovery" and is Europe's first painting of an Australian animal. Having recently been saved for the nation, this exhibition offers a chance to see the artwork among other animal portrayals from the time of their earliest European encounters. Many of the artworks on display were created by people who had never seen these animals in the flesh - including a sixteenth century copy of Dürer's famous armoured rhinoceros, medieval accounts of exotic creatures, fake "dragon" specimens created from dried fish by sailors, contemporary knitted craft taxidermy and twenty-first century reconstructions of dinosaurs.Together they explore how unknown animals are communicated to the wider public.