Nature boy.

London, England, 2016.

1 sculpture : porcelain with black stain, mounted in wood box ; 50 x 37 x 20 cm

Restricted fragile material. Use requires permission of the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Nature Boy is connected by narrative to Morling's Butterfly Cabinet and Rummage and Gather: "My work is driven by my personal narrative and often pieces lead to other works. Nature Boy is all about teenage angst, really. He goes out with his rucksack [from Rummage and Gather] and collects bugs and nature. He is unsure of who he is in the world and starts collecting things to inform himself. He wants to pin down beauty, like in the old Victorian displays [like Butterfly Cabinet]. He wants to hold onto it but in the process he ends up killing it. Everything goes in the end ... Though Nature Boy is quite a small piece, I have made his rucksack life size so that I could look into it."--Information provided by the artist, 2017. See links herewith for descriptions of the two related works.

The work includes sculpted porcelain components arranged in the two interior compartments of a nineteenth-century wooden box. The titular Nature Boy sits in the compartment at right, legs dangling beyond the lower edge of the box. He holds a cup containing pins (made of porcelain) for mounting natural specimens. He is surrounded by such specimens, including a turtle, the skulls of two birds, six insects (including butterflies), and a botanical specimen. Affixed in the box on the left side is a reproduction of the beginning of Chapter XX, "The Cockroach," in J.B. Farmer's The book of nature study (London: Caxton Publishing Co., 1908).

Other

English

December 04, 2017