Lock up your pets: Russian artist uses roadkill as raw material for his work

The Russian artist Petr Davydtchenko has been busy eating roadkill for the past year, skinning and then consuming animals that have met a grisly end. Their hides are included in How to Say It the Way It Is! (until 2 December), an exhibition at Dublin’s Rua Red gallery of works commissioned and collected by A/Political, a London-based non-profit organisation that collaborates with socio-political artists. Davydtchenko worked on the project at the Foundry, a space run by A/Political in the south-western French town of Maubourguet. “We’ve been surprised how people in the local community have been involved, dropping GPS pins for him to find animals, and arriving at the Foundry with a poster of a lost pet they hope he hasn’t eaten. He’s archived all the surreal conversations,” says Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan, the organisation’s director.