From contemporary deployments of taxidermy, magic lanterns and microscopy to the visualization of forgotten lives, marginalized narratives and colonial histories, this book explores how the work of artists including Mat Collishaw, Yinka Shonibare, Tessa Farmer, Mark Dion, Dorothy Cross and Ingrid Pollard reimag(in)es the Victorians in the ‘present’. Examining how recent paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and films revisit and re-present nineteenth-century technologies, practices and events, the book’s rich interdisciplinary approach applies literary, media and linguistic theories to its analysis of visual art, alongside in-depth discussions of the Victorian inventions, concepts and narratives that they invoke. The book’s emphasis on how – and why – we represent the historical past makes its contribution particularly timely. And by drawing attention to the importance of historiography to the work of these artists, it also unravels the complicated history of History itself. This book will speak to diverse audiences including those interested in art history, visual culture, Victorian and neo-Victorian studies, as well as literature, histories of science and media, postcolonialism, museology, gender studies, postmodernism and the history of ideas.

A comprehensive survey of American artist Mark Dion, examining three decades of his critically engaged practice interrogating our relationship with nature The first book in two decades to consider the entire oeuvre of Mark Dion (b. 1961), this volume examines thirty years of the American artist's pioneering inquiries into how we collect, interpret, and display nature. Part of a generation of artists expanding institutional critique in the 1990s, Dion adopted the methods of the archaeologist or the natural history museum, juxtaposing natural objects, taxidermy, books, and more to reorganize the natural and the manmade in poetic, witty ways. These sculptures, installations, and interventions offer novel approaches to questioning institutional power, which he sees as connected to the control and representation of nature. Generously illustrated, this publication introduces new insights and features more than seventy-five artworks. Essays address topics ranging from Dion's ecological activism to his loving critique of museums. A diverse group of contributors explores his work as a teacher, his public artworks such as Neukom Vivarium in Seattle, and his intricate curiosity cabinets installed throughout the world. They reveal how Dion's practice and formal investigations--which are rooted in history--connect to contemporary questions of disciplinary boundaries and the acquisition of knowledge in the age of the Anthropocene.

This volume presents Mark Dion's most recent work, which largely comprises the digs he has been concerned with in Italy, Switzerland, and London (including the Tate Thames Dig Beachcombing on London's Foreshore). The book provides a preface to each of these projects by the artist, and showcases much of his previously unpublished work. In addition, a text by Alex Coles frames Dion's current projects. Further texts from the diverse lecture programme currently taking place at the Tate Gallery in conjunction with Tate Thames Dig elucidate the artist's work.