The aspect of human error in the works make apparent the unnecessary, illogical levels of labour involved in the processes of construction, and the innate futility of this labour when the frailty and worthlessness of the individual materials is considered. In terms of the processes I use to make my work, and the way that the masses of small objects function as a whole, I enjoy the way the pieces appear to have been manufactured by a machine building patterns, much like nature but less successful, less beautiful, and less sustainable. It plays with time and this is a notion I am interested in pushing as far as I can. The crow is a taxidermy specimen, but the strawberries surrounding it are fresh and begin to decay before the piece can even be fully installed, dripping juices and mould all around the crow, thus conflicting with the notion of what taxidermy traditionally is, and our own preconceptions of how we might relate to each aspect of the work. Fluid is a piece where a crow appears to be plumetting through a dense plane of vivid red strawberries.

Recently I have coupled different organic materials to achieve quite extreme examples of this. I would like to achieve something that is neither moving nor still, or that possesses a certain contradiction by virtue of the combination of the two within it.

Over time my ideas seem to have become more static, though with a view to achieving something akin to a freezeframe of an (often dramatic) action or process, so that the passing of time, or otherwise, becomes acutely apparent. At the very beginning all my ideas involved materials that were changing very fast, ice, fruit, unpreserved animal carcasses and live insects breeding, so the experience of one viewer would differ from that of the next. Could you please comment on the temporal aspect of your artwork and on your own methodical artistic process?ĬM: Temporality has always been an important aspect of the things I make. Not only do you integrate living and inanimate materials (each with their individual velocities of action), but the compositional patterns themselves have a rhythmic musical force.

variable (h) x 1.5m (d) x 1.5m (w) Exhibited in Building With Colour at Gallery North, Newcastle, UK, and Consumer at Palais de Tokyo, Paris Photo Credit: Kris HeathĪLJ: The relationship between movement and stillness is so compelling in your installations.

鹽的代價 by Claire Morgan