Luke Thompson

Rhinoceros Luke Thompson

Ganda the rhinoceros was a celebrity when he arrived in Europe in the sixteenth century. Kings and popes were intrigued, while poets and artists raced to depict the rhinoceros regardless of whether they had seen him with their own eyes. Most notable among them was Albrecht Dürer, whose celebrated woodcut is held in the British Museum. Rhinoceros is a playful fragmented reflection on the life of Ganda and the position he assumed as representative of his species, layered with expectations from millennia of wonky natural histories, bestiaries and etymologies. It looks at the rhinoceros as a spectacle, tracing a literary journey from Diodorus and Pliny the Elder to Babar the Elephant and Disney, via unicorns, YouTube, Ionesco and the Medicis.