Magpie (2019 - 2020)
or сорока or Elster... I needed only to describe this bird as a lovable thief to collect my translations.
Tigress canines matched with human incisors and snakeskin thighs, this is my hybrid predator. She's fragmented, stuffed/fleshed out with my old clothes and on display. But unlike museum vitrines, there is no glass frontage here to separate the 'specimens' from the viewer. The boundaries between the human body, our manufactured environment and the natural world are superficial and now they are crumbling and becoming permeable. We must adopt a more holistic view of the world and reconsider our placement within it, if we are to move forward.
Displayed in the form of deconstructed vitrines in 'Trespassers will be detected', Dnipro Centre for Contemporary Culture, Dnipro, Ukraine (2020); as part of the British Council SWAP UK/Ukraine Residency Programme 2019 exhibition. The exhibition closed the day after opening all thanks to Covid-19, but you can take a weightless wander around >>HERE<< The objects on show splice together my own body with casts and studies of specimens at the Natural History Museum in Kharkiv in 2019.
the following are sketches for 'Magpie'
These are my sculptures in progress that I made while on residency with the Yermilov Centre and The Natural History Museum/Karazin University in Kharkiv, as part of the British Council's SWAP UK/Ukraine 2019 Residency Programme.
A mould of a Crotalus Atrox (western rattlesnake), plaster on found wood, 2019
Nickname: Snake Hose; oil paint on hosepipe; 2019
