Sam Keogh | The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle Cartoon

The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle Cartoon is an installation of large-scale figurative collage by artist Sam Keogh. These intricate works on paper draw heavily from The Hunt of the Unicorn, a series of seven tapestries made in Flanders at the turn of the 16th century.

Flemish tapestries from this period required vast wealth to produce and were commissioned by aristocrats or wealthy merchants to demonstrate their social standing. During the French revolution, many such artefacts were either iconoclastically destroyed or repurposed toward more useful ends. In this way, sections of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries were used to protect fruit trees and potatoes from frost or to keep horses warm in the winter months. The tapestries’ surfaces are pockmarked by areas of damage and repair – a material trace of these political events, each a fraying, tearing and patching up of Europe’s historical narrative.