Title:  Pinta Island Tortoise

Year: 2024

Media:  Archival Giclee print on photo rag paper

Size: 20 x 30 cm

About the work:

The print is a still from Marcus Coates' video, In search of the quagga and other extinct animals, 2021, Coates uses his hands to create a shadow and a crude approximation of the now extinct Pinta Island Tortoise (2012). He visited the last existing individual in Galapagos in 2008.

Bio: Marcus Coates is based in London, he works across video, performance, photography and painting. From his attempts to become animals to his vicarious experiences on behalf of people, Coates' work is an enquiry into the degrees to which we can understand, know and relate to others. His work is often performative using a process of radical empathy as a motivation to create, examine and critique relational tools. He tests actual and perceived boundaries between individuals, within communities and with other species.