Darwinism continued...     13th Jan 2009

I spent all day yesterday drawing in the studio and thinking about my Darwinism-esque project. When it comes to my work, I quite like the act of organising; coloured highlighters for notes, inks separated b y colour and papers shuffled into piles by weight. The way in which Darwin collected his speciemens, preserving, recording and orgaising, enchants me. I imagine great laboratories, shelves heaving with giant bell jars containing stuffed finches, jars and jars of pickled amphibians and carefully labelled glass topped drawers, displaying delicate lines of butterflies and moths, each pinned down voo-doo style with a hand written label.

This lead me to thinking about the act of preserving nature, not for science but for art. It's a bit of an oddball train of thought, and my granny didn't seem to think it was a nice line of enquiry for a young lady like myself, yet something about the macabre fascinates me. 

Here's a wee snap shot of the things I'm looking at:

Foxes at the Darwin Museum, Moscow.

Gunther von Hagen's famous Body Worlds Exhibition - preserving nature on an extreme visual level.

Damien Hirst's series of animals preserved in formaldehyde included a shark, a wolf and a sheep.

More from the intriguing work of Polly Morgan.