Things I Did This Week & Art Post

Hello everyone  I hope you're all having a good week. For once, the weather here has been lovely so I've actually been doing things other than sitting in my room all week ! Here's some of the things I've been upto~

On Thursday I went to a wonderful live demonstration on taxidermy, titled Live and Stuffing, given by the artist Polly Morgan. She is a contemporary artist who predominately uses taxidermy in her works. I'd never seen any of her work prior to going to this but it's absolutely spectacular and definatly relevant to my interests  Here are some of my favourite pieces by her :

 

You can visit her website here. Polly also has a solo exhibition, titled Endless Plains, in the All Visual Arts gallery at Kings Cross, London from June 18th - July 14th. This will be her largest installation to date and will feature new works including piglets suckling from a rotting tree.. so creepy, I can't wait ! 

I love taxidermy and I am definetly interested in starting up a small collection (mostly of insects because I am in love with them) but I find the stigma connected to it a bit off-putting. However, not only was Polly's demonstration completely facinating but it was also incredibly informative about the laws surrounding taxidermy, and how she herself obtains the animal bodies used in her work. I was pleased to learn that all of her taxidermy either comes from road casualties or is donated to her from pet owners - which I think is a lovely idea. I definetly feel better about the idea of owning some taxidermy if I know that I can source it from somewhere ethical ! I love animals; I don't eat meat or use any products with animal derivitives in but I think taxidermy is really lovely and sometimes really sinister.. so right up my street !

The Live and Stuffing demonstration was held in the Victoria Gallery and Museum which, despite being quite close to where I live, I've actually never visited before. It's a beautiful building and if anyone ever has the chance to go I would emplore you to do so ! They have lots of wonderful pieces and my absolute favourite was the dental history section ! It was so creepy and facinating, I didn't want to leave.

   

~science derp~

Finally, I had my interview for college on Monday. I was so, so nervous and stressed all weekend about it but it went really well and I was offered a place on the course ! I was so nervous I couldn't really talk about the concepts behind my art but at I got offered a spot ! I'm so pleased and excited, I can't wait for September so I can get back into art properly, and not just as a hobby as it has been for the past couple of years. I didn't think my portfolio was amazing since I'd really rushed to get a lot of work finished on time, but here are some pieces I submitted

   

  

I'm going to try and make more frequent art posts here, especially since I've already been set a lot of work to do over the summer and it would be nice to be able to get some feedback and also get used to showing my work publicly again, which is something I haven't done since my super active days on dA (and my art has changed a LOT since then). I have a lot of really fun posts planned for the next few weeks but I'm also quite busy ; ; Hopefully the weather will stick around for a bit longer as well, it's nice to be able to go out in summer clothes - although I've been cowering in the shade a lot with my super pale skin

Hope you're all enjoying the summery weather too !