The Ultimate Noah’s Ark

Giant parade balloons shaped like a lion, a giraffe, a penguin and a tiger drift above a grey city street, trailing hundreds of small coloured balloons into a cloudy sky. Below, the pavement is jammed with real animals: a chimp in dark glasses, a giant tortoise, a ram, a panda, a crocodile; a great many of them in grey business suits. Mike Wilks painted over seven hundred creatures here, two by two, and left exactly one without a mate.

Faces and balloons repeat at every scale and nothing runs in a straight line, so this comes together in small local patches rather than long sweeps. Finished size 73.7 x 50.8cm.