"Here is the end of all things"
Thistle, seeds, bluebottles, a taxidermy barn owl, nylon, lead, acrylic
2011
London-based artist Claire Morgan's delicate sculptural installations presents a disturbing liminal point in time where the natural flow of life has been arrested in some way. Theorist Manuel Aguirre employs an understanding of the liminal as a defining feature in the Gothic novel. In his understanding, the effects of terror in the Gothic novel are due to the textual constitution of a threshold between the domain of rationality and the world of the 'Other', the 'Numinous'. This threshold, or 'limen', expands and become an unhomely space of its own in which the protagonists are caught up and subsequently attempt to escape.
In Morgan's work the suspended matter (from a taxidermy barn owl, thistle, seeds and other artificial materials) presents an ambitious appeal for an urgent renegotiation of our relationship to the earth. Petrified animals populate this liminal threshold, haunting the periphery of our familiar world with a measurable physical presence and stillness. Darren Ambrose (October, 2008) observed that in Morgan's works "the avatars from the closed realm of nature are brought into the visibility of our world and are coaxed into speaking our language". The viewer's engagement with nature is staged through a careful consideration of natural rhythms and cycles. The poetic installation has a strange balance between chaos, control, constraint, balance and geometric form.
No comments:
Post a Comment