Polly Morgan, 2006. Photograph by Anna Schori.
Polly Morgan is rapidly becoming a name to watch among a new generation of British artists. Her work has already been snapped up by Texan collectors, Vanessa Branson and Kate Moss, and she has been chosen to appear in an exhibition of the most exciting emerging British artists at Bonham's this September.
For her first show, at Bistrotheque, one of the haunts of the Shoreditch/Hackney art crowd, Polly Morgan presented a series of phantasmagorical bell jars, all of which sold out. She has exhibited with T1+2 at London's Zoo Art Fair and at the 2006 Chicago Art Fair, and her work was included in the group show that inaugurated Laz Inc, a gallery which opened earlier this year on Greek Street in London's Soho.
Morgan has also been selected to take part in a major new exhibition at Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds, opening 1 July, which looks at the broad spectrum of contemporary sculpture from land art to installation works to site-specific projects. 'Reconstruction 1', the first in a series of exhibitions at Sudeley based around this theme, has been curated by Mollie Dent-Brockelhurst, co-director of the Gagosian Gallery, London, and Elliott McDonald, curator of Hiscox Art Projects. The exhibition brings together work by internationally renowned artists such as Ghader Amer, Carsten Holler, Cy Twombly, Tomas Saraceno, Conrad Shawcross and Wim Delvoye.
Polly Morgan will be exhibiting four new pieces at Sudeley which we have an exclusive preview of on Your Gallery daily magazine. Recently described as 'Britain's hottest bird stuffer,' Morgan studied taxidermy under George Jamieson, a legendary figure in the field, in order to create still lives whose subject is the preserved dead animal. Unexpected settings and unusual juxtapositions - a fox and a chandelier, a live chick on a dead pigeon - challenge us to rethink the cliched emotions associated with certain animals and to look at them with fresh eyes.
Polly Morgan's work will be at Zoo again this October, and she has been commissioned to create a piece for Mark Hix's new restaurant venture in Mayfair. To contact Polly Morgan and find out about future projects, please visit her website, www.pollymorgan.co.uk
'Reconstruction 1'
Sudeley Castle until 31 October
www.sudeleycastle.co.uk
Tel: 01242 602308
Polly Morgan, Still Life After Death (birds), 2006
Polly Morgan, Still Life After Death (fox), 2006
Polly Morgan, Still Life After Death (rabbit), 2006
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