Jonathan Delafield Cook was commissioned to create a site-specific  charcoal drawing for an atrium wall, above an internal staircase linking two floors of executive meeting rooms at international law firm Pinsent Masons.

 

The work depicts a dramatic, larger than life barnacle, rigorously observed but abstract by virtue of its enormous scale, showing a form from the natural world that is simultaneously familiar and strange. Prior to the commission, the artist had explored this subject as part of a series of drawings inspired by the research and travels of Charles Darwin, specifically his voyage on The Beagle 1831-36. Delafield Cook began this body of work in 2009, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species, and the complete series consists of detailed drawings of marine life, from barnacles (a particular obsession of Darwin) to an awe-inspiring full scale drawing of a sperm whale.