An English literature graduate, Polly fell into taxidermy after attending a one day course – taken on a whim when she couldn’t find any stuffed animals she liked on eBay – she explains; “It wasn’t a conscious thing where I thought, ‘I want to be the weirdo’… My nature has always been to go in the other direction to where I think everyone else is going. I think underneath it all I’m quite competitive and I don’t want to stand in a big crowd.”
Five years ago it was difficult to see taxidermy as anything other than a dying art (excuse the pun) with stuffed animals belonging to questionable 1970’s interior design, yet Morgan has revived the medium by using the animals as part of a larger scene – so we get a bird gazing at his reflection in an ornate mirror as a skinned white mouse lays below.
Her work has garnered support from mainstream contemporary artists such as Dinos Chapman and Damien Hirst, landing slots at high profile exhibitions. |With an ever rising profile her prices are anything between £300 – a quail head on a wire – to £85,000 – the price of her large scale ‘Flying Machine’, as bought by a German Collector last year.
Along with a growing fan base and praise from fellow artists, A-list celebrities such as Kate Moss and Courtney Love have picked up her her taxidermy masterpieces. When questioned about her ascent to Taxidermist to the Stars, Polly responded, “I don’t suppose I sell to any more celebrities than anyone else. I’d actually be a bit worried if I did. It suggests you’re a bit of a fad. If Paris Hilton bought one, I’d get scared.”
Her newer work has moved away from her earlier use of animals as sculpture, evolving into an exploration of animal carcasses as ‘raw material’. As the unassuming artist puts it; “Maybe [taxidermy] will become more of a conventional medium, like using clay or oil paint. I don’t know of many artists who use taxidermy pretty much exclusively as I do, and I just haven’t exhausted it yet.”
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