The other eight backers are retired professor Tricia David, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir John Sulston, journalist Philip Knightley, Lady Caroline Evans, friend Sarah Saunders, Joseph Farrell, Sarah Harrison and Tracy Worcester.

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But few works, since Francis Picabia's depiction of Marie Laurencin as an imaginary machine, challenge convention as much as the portrait of Sir John Sulston by Marc Quinn, recently unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery.

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