February 14, 2018

Free Thinking: Mark Dion; Colour, Insects, Virginia Woolf

44 minutes

American artist, Mark Dion has a new exhibition on in London: Theatre of the Natural World . Dion is exhilarated by the natural world but tells Anne McElvoy why his art is about how we classify it and what that says about us.

Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by her Writings opens at Tate St Ives so Anne McElvoy finds out how questions about colour perception and insect behaviour in turn inspired the writer. Literary scholars Claudia Tobin and Rachel Murray discuss.

Evolutionary biologists, Menno Schiltuizen and Suzanne Williams, tell Anne about how colour and invertebrate studies in ecosystems old and new are refining our understanding of evolution.

Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World at Whitechapel Gallery, London until May 13th

Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings at Tate St Ives continues until April 29th.

Menno Schiltuizen 'Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution' is out now.

Suzanne Williams, Researcher and Head of Invertebrate Division, Natural History Museum, London.

Claudia Tobin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge

Rachel Murray, School of Humanities, University of Bristol

Presenter: Anne McElvoy

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By BBC Radio 4

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