TAXIDERMY BIRDS & BEASTS

On Essex Road, one evening I was caught by the bright lights of a shop called ‘Get Stuffed’, a peculiar Aladdin’s Cave of Taxidermy (and gilt human skulls). Looking in the window of the closed shop I saw an entire kingdom of animals, sitting paradoxically together- big and small, exotic and commonplace, still and motionless. Comatosel, harmonising in colour and composition, together only in death as their primal instinct wouldn't allow the binary natures of cat and mouse to happily sit together in life.

These objects exist as a residue, mysterious skins that give a suggestion of life, like the snake that sheds its skin, life has gone, but its existence is preserved. Demi-resurrected by the hands of man, they have been re-created and will sit on shelves and behind glass vetrines staring through glassy eyes. In the meantime, their intricate insides, heart and brain, muscle and bone, will all follow the inherent parade of nature’s decaying path.