Polly Morgan
A trained taxidermist, Morgan began working as an artist in 2005. Since then she has attracted a multitude of collectors from David Roberts and Anita Zabludowicz to Kate Moss and will cap exhibitions in 2009 at Tunnel 228 and the Lazarides gallery, with upcoming shows with All Visual Arts in October and at Haunch of Venison in London in May 2010. Her work exploits her taxidermy skills in still life arrangements. She plays with conventions of both: the interaction of the wild subjects within the peculiar context of the civilised still life pose; the conceit of the dead animal frozen in a living pose. Inevitable considerations of death and horror run through her subjects, often animals are left in an ambiguous sleep or not just preserved, but arranged, at the point between death and decaying - a period she delights in.
Carrion Call
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Sculpture
123cm x 132cm x 58cm
Wood coffin, Taxidermy quail chicks
The title puns another bird, the scavenging Carrion Crow and a clarion call, or call to action. The quail chicks, whose youth, softness and fragility stands against the rough grain of the old coffin, seem at first to be escaping, but could equally be nesting. They are frozen uncomfortably in the midst of a hungry calling out of their own.
£19,550
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