Progress in academic maggot painting (part 3 of 3)

Following our recent items on academic maggot painting in the US and UK, (beginning with part 1, and proceeding thence to later parts) we now switch attention to Tasmania, Australia, and the artworks created by Dr. John Parish Ph.D. who entitled his 2012 thesis for the University of Tasmania : ‘Lost or Gone. Nature’s remnants: mysteries and threats of human and native species interactions, past and present.’

Part of the project examined the way in which maggots might be able to assist in the process of creating artworks. A university news-release expands on Dr. Parish’s methodology :

“He placed the carcasses of a [Tasmanian] devil, a wallaby, a possum and a quoll each in its own Parish-created contraption allowing the maggots to drop into a funnel, then into one of four dishes containing four different coloured paints.

The maggots swam out of the paint, crawling across the paper away from the light, leaving behind their individual records. Mysteriously, these maggot patterns somehow ’embody some aspect of the creatures consumed,’ John maintains.

Placed beside his intricate drawings of the animals, the maggot markings bear an uncanny resemblance to the animal they dropped out of: heavy black splodges for the devil; light swirly patterning for Tasmania’s native cat, the quoll.”

This concludes a short Improbable series on academic maggot painting.