In the summer of 1986, Helen Chadwick took a two month residency at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. The focus of her attention was a small eighteenth century oil painting 'Allegory of Misrule' by Johann Georg Platzer in the permanent collection. Working with her own photocopied image and photocopies of frozen, dead animals from the museum's Natural History department, slide projection of the original painting and a second slide projection of an atomic explosion, the historical painting was changed into a magnified allegory that directly addressed a contemporary world.