What makes contemporary art about animals “contemporary”? How easy is it to maintain a cutting edge, a critical engagement with the forms of current art practice, at the same time as attending to the condition of nonhuman animals? The stakes are high, because contemporary animal imagery that fails to signal its contemporaneity will struggle to reach beyond a small audience already engaged by its subject matter but largely oblivious to its form – its work – as art. And does the all-too-human genre of portraiture really have any useful role in that portrayal?