Claire Morgan Suspends Taxidermied Animals and Plants in Her Floating Installations

For some artists, "Mixed media" might include magazine clippings, fabric, or discarded computer circuit boards. For London artist <a title="Claire Morgan- Exhibitions and News" href="http://www.claire-morgan.co.uk/Exhibitions-and-News%28226177%29.htm" target="_blank">Claire Morgan</a>, her palate consists of taxidermied animals, dessicated insects, seeds, and fruit. Her floating sculptures are composed of hundreds of tiny elements suspended from nylon strings, and they invite reflection on the notions of life, death, and the human predilection to control and dominate the natural world.

The Karsten Greve Gallery in Paris will be presenting a solo show of Claire Morgan's works entitled "Quietus" through November 3rd.

The exhibition will include Morgan's intricate, hanging sculptures as well as drawings and paintings on paper and canvas.

Composed of taxidermy, dried plants and insects, found objects, and recycled materials, her work comments on society's desire to manipulate and create order, many times at the expense of living beings.

Speaking of her work, Morgan states, "my attention has been drawn to the cheap distractions we choose to place in our immediate vicinity, with which to screen us from the overwhelming facts; that we are nothing; that our only certainty as individuals is a life, of unspecified duration, and then a death."

Each floating part of Morgan's larger installations is certainly hanging by a literal precarious thread, uneasily playing a role in the makeup of the larger picture, ready to eventually be cut down at the end of the exhibition.

Morgan constructs her suspended installations from a combination of natural and synthetic elements.

Fragile and beautiful, and carefully constructed, Morgan's work lets the viewer both marvel at the beauty of her craftsmanship, and reflect on the inevitability of its dissolution.