It appears to be a suicide: the victim is slumped on a kitchen table, dishes unwashed, empty spirit glass, gun on the floor. But why? What pushed this poor squirrel to such desperate lengths?  Visitors to the Whitechapel Gallery in London can speculate for themselves – nut-rationing? Tired of being chased by toddlers? – as the work and others by the art world's master joker Maurizio Cattelan go on display for 10 weeks.  The artwork is owned by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who began collecting Cattelan's work in the early 1990s. In 1996, visiting London, she fell in love with, and bought, the dead squirrel. "It is full of nostalgia and at the same time, energy and is very representative of Maurizio," she said.  "He is an artist who is always able to talk about things without saying this is how it is, he gives us the opportunity, the possibility to think and talk about important political and social things. It is not just art to decorate walls."  The dead squirrel raises all sorts of discussions. Is it a meditation on social mobility? The work is called Bidibidobidiboo, the Fairy Godmother's spell to transform Cinderella – but no one was ever going to transform this squirrel, living in such dingy surroundings with little hope of escape to a better life. It was, in every sense of the word, stuffed.  Or is it a much more personal piece? The kitchen is modelled on the one Cattelan grew up in and the artist has talked about how his mother accidentally left a hot iron on the yellow Formica table. To save it, his father sawed off the end with the burn mark leaving the family to always eat their meals on an absurdly shrunken table.  The squirrel is a key work in the collection and one of eight Cattelan works on display at the Whitechapel, many not seen in the UK for more than 20 years. They travel to London as the gallery continues its project to show works from collections that are rarely seen by the public in the UK. The works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation collection based in Turin follow previous displays of work from the collection of Dimitris Daskalopoulos as well as work from the British Council and Government Art Collections.  It also represents a rare opportunity to see so many Cattelan works in the same place. There have not been that many Cattelan shows, often because he is something of a nightmare for curators.  When the Guggenheim in New York staged a Cattelan retrospective last year, he asked that the works – almost his entire artistic output – should be strung up in the museum's central atrium, like an enormous mobile. Perhaps because it was a mid-career retrospective Cattelan then retired, aged 51.  Cattelan has never shied from controversy and some of his best known work includes The Ninth Hour, showing the Pope struck by a meteor, and HIM showing a suited Hitler kneeling in the pleading position.  The works in the Whitechapel display demonstrate Cattelan's political edge beyond the humour, such as a piece called Lullaby, which is a bag of rubble taken from the Contemporary Art Pavilion in Milan after it was damaged in a Mafia-related bomb attack in 1993. Next to it is a red neon Christmas greeting with the logo of the Red Brigades as a kind of star of Bethlehem.  The Cattelans will be on display until 2 December after which there will be a further three displays from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection at the Whitechapel.
Artwork featuring lifeless rodent slumped at a table forms part of exhibition of Italian artist's work at Whitechapel Gallery