Hard-hitting stuff
Artist Polly Morgan's work is taxidermy with a twist.
Instead of a mounted stag's head or wide-eyed owl under a glass dome, her creations include a robin that appears to have got stuck while flying through a pane of glass, a dead sparrow prostate on a copy of the New Testament and a magpie perched on a Bakelite telephone.
Her first solo exhibition, which opens today, challenges our perceptions of death and nature and teeters on the edge of macabre.
Former Things, the largest piece in the show, features a waxwork woman in a dressing gown hunched over a table laid for two. An array of dead creatures fills the space where her dining partner should be.
Morgan, a former bar manager, whose customers include Kate Moss, had an informal apprenticeship with a master taxidermist in Edinburgh.
"After my first lesson I was hooked," said the artist, from Finsbury Park.
"I wouldn't call myself a taxidermist, I'm not trying to make the animals look alive. I'm more interested in the moment after death but before decomposition-I've always been a little bit morbid and intrigued by death. I'm terrified by it and perhaps this is my way of coming to terms with that."
The Exquisite Corpse is at Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone Road.
