striding giants in some huge carnivalesque procession. Is here "striding" referring to "we (viewers)" or "them (the giant insects)"? The British painter Mark Fairnington creates reproductions of insects in supernatural dimensions and accurate to the finest detail. Unavoidably anthropomorphising them, we confront them poised between living and dead, their crackly limbs held up in astonishment, their crumpled wings shaken out or folded so as to allow the light to gleam on their coloured markings, their globulous eyes and unwittingly smiling mouths bidding us to admire them, striding giants in some huge carnivalesque procession.