POLLY MORGAN: an accidental artist

Polly Morgan in her studio, Photography by Pal Hansen

British artist Polly Morgan, one-time Shoreditch barmaid and English literature graduate, lives and works from her in East London studio in Bethnal Green. A one-day taxidermy course on a whim was the starting point to a fully-fledged artistic career stuffing dead animals.

This is not your normal taxidermy. A lovebird looking in a mirror; a magpie with a jewel in its beak; chicks standing on a miniature coffin; a cage held aloft by vultures; and pheasant chicks suspended from balloons. It is still life art, with the animal as subject. Morgan explains that by seeing the animals out of context it encourages the viewer to look at them as if for the first time. That as we get older and jaded, because we’ve seen it all before, she aims to create a sense of magic. For Morgan, animals are like paints would be for a painter or clay for a sculptor. She wonders whether it will become more of a conventional medium. Or, on the other hand, whether she and her taxidermy are a trendy fad. But what is clear is that her work has become more experimental and she is further exploring the possibilities of the animals. Her work is becoming bigger in scale and more abstract and sculptural. She is growing confidence in her accidental profession.

She was first persuaded to show some pieces at a friend’s bar opening in 2004. Then again cajoled, she sowed at a friend's stand at the Zoo Art Fair. Her work – a rat curled in a champagne glass – was sold before the fair even opened. With some luck perhaps, this early work caught the attention of Baksy, and in 2005 he commissioned her to produce work for his annual exhibition Santa’s Ghetto. She then went on to exhibit at similarly high-profile shows, such as Jay Jopling’s White Cube. And she has collected some influential and supportive friends, Dinos Chapman and Noble & Webster, and equally influential fans, Kate Moss and Courtney Love.

Her prices now range from around £300 for a quail chick's head on a wire, to £85,000 for the large-scale Departures (the cage held aloft by vultures), which she sold to a German collector last year.

The thirty-year-old had her first solo exhibition, Psychopomps at the Haunch of Venison at the end of last year. However, she is currently showing a selection of her exquisite and dark pieces at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, in exhibition Contemporary Eye alongside such company as Damien Hirst, the Chapman Brother and Jeff Koons.