I: TRANSFORMATION AS OPINION

When the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius famously scribed, “The universe is transformation: life is opinion”, he very neatly discharged the oxymoron that ineluctably massages the very nature of our human experience. All that reverberates as exterior to us remains in a state of continual flux and condensation; our universe signified as some ever-evolving paradigm of collective perspicacity that only gains measure or meaning when the individual draws from it some sense of reason or judgment that serves to colour their opinion.

Our shuffle through life – as process – is at times arduous, beautiful or even cruel: we are forced to suffer Shakespeare’s slings and arrows because our quest in, of and for a consequential existence is ultimately realised by the superintendence of such tectonic shifts in the geology of meaning, as provided by vernaculars as various, nebulous or concrete as science, philosophy or religion, and to elicit from it some sense of existential animus and personal authenticity. Much as the planet we inhabit whizzes around the sun, zooming through the darkness of the unknown, so too do we, as humans, live a life that tries to grab just a little empathy and consideration from the vortex of development and debate that challenges yet moulds it. After all, is not the very dynamo of selfhood both rewarded and reduced by its proximity to a fizzing alterity that quizzes and cultivates in equal measure?

This contest between transformation and opinion, between flux and fixity is as a good a lens as any through which one can begin to explore the work of Polly Morgan. Not necessarily because the artist aims to separate these two tributaries of meaning (even if she seeks their intellectual articulation in lexical distinction from each other) but because she creates objects that, like ancient hieroglyphs, twist and coil in cryptic multivalence, issuing a transmogrification of form and symbol just as that Egyptian script saw men and meaning turn into beasts and gods. Rather, Morgan makes art that seeks to transform opinion through acts and arcs of coalition; hers are objects that phenomenologically touch on material conversion yet empower such mutation to quarrel with the reality and import of experience.

Polly Morgan’s latest body of work, Any Gifts or Gadgets? brings together a group of mysterious, precious sculptures that fizz because they continue to embrace under her curious, intelligent eye various binaries: battles between realms of fact and fiction; forms of Natures and the nature of Form; the prosaic decadence of desire and the poetic longing of need. All this beautifully choreographed antagonism is further imbued with a deeply personal connotation, following the passing of Morgan’s sister. Together, this ninth Scene seeks to separate the gadgetfrom the gift; to identify what holds meaning in matter but also to distil what really matters when we seek such meaning.

II: MIMESIS AND SEDUCTION

The first act of any object is to seduce its viewer. Surface, texture, colour, structure, scale and dimensionality all commingle in tantalising tessellation to beguile the viewer, satisfying the object’s innate demand to be experienced (that is to be seen, if not necessarily to be understood). In this presentation, Morgan’s objects are deliberately small. Domestically proportioned, they are no larger than those all-too familiar packages full of pointless stuff, ordered on a whim online, and delivered to millions of front doors the next day. Sometimes they are so small they could fit in a handbag. It is important to note this domiciliary scale because that inaugurates the object’s allurement, persuading the viewer of its resplendence and desirability whilst letting the viewer know just how easy it is to own this object; live with this object. To consume it.

Polly Morgan, Explore the Range, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, 31.5 x 22.5 x 10.5 cm (12 3/8 x 8 7/8 x 4 1/8 in)

Polly Morgan, Explore the Range, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, 31.5 x 22.5 x 10.5 cm (12 3/8 x 8 7/8 x 4 1/8 in)

Explore the Range (2025) presents itself as a trio of polystyrene packaging forms, layered on top of each other and extruding out into space off the wall on which it is displayed. Such packaging is designed to protect objects whilst in transit but here it safeguards three taxidermized snakes, shimmering in iridescent shades of pale blue. Morgan has cast the polystyrene original in polyurethane; a material that captures its source in the most granular fashion yet transforms what was a dry and brittle surface into one - born of unctuous, primordial goo - that is now supple and silky to the touch. Likewise, the snakes, coiled into these oleaginous, furfuraceous rosettes of eyeshadow blue, are also cast in the same manner with the same materials. In the past Morgan had employed actual snake skins in her works, directed by her interest in the craft and cunning of taxidermy. Now the artist prefers to cast her snakes and paint those casts directly via a combination of techniques that sees Morgan airbrush acrylic inks onto the cast, remove certain patches of that application and then paint those areas in oils. The finishing touch is provided by the iridescent powders, transfers and lacquers one usually associates with ‘nail art’. It’s a laborious process but one which affords a finer finish and which, of course, engenders an even more mesmerising dizzy of mimetic desire in both her object and its viewer.

Morgan’s curious object thus unveils a mischievous mimesis: one that certainly seeks to hoodwink the viewer into believing the materials on view are not real but casts, but also to then challenge the viewer’s optic and logic in trying to fathom why three snakes nestle inside such pedestrian packaging. Various material realities here inveigh against one other, with the history of their friction (and vice versa), in turn, nurturing a narrative that sits outside of the orbit of each object’s fabric and its means of fabrication. What we end up with is a scintillating curio that delights as much as it interrogates and even distresses, unveiling itself in gloriously recondite objecthood whilst nourishing a mystery of origin and climax, as both subject and story, that fills the sculpture with a timeless enigma.

III:A PALETTE OF DECEPTION

Snakes, in various degrees of finish and abbreviation, feature prominently in Morgan’s enterprise. In many ways they are the perfect vehicle with which to articulate the numerous deceptions that so interest the artist; such mendacity being the fuel that fires the signification of her sculptural facsimiles, false narratives and, by extension, the falsehoods that lubricate much of the world’s political and economic governance today, only amplified by channels of social media hellbent on subverting the truth. Snakes are designed so that they can easily blend into their environment or mimic other, more deadly breeds. Their natural ability to camouflage themselves has, in turn, endowed the animal with a trickery and treachery of personality that colours many cultures’ appreciation of them. From The Bibleto Ovid’s Metamorphosesto Kipling’s The Jungle Book, snakes slither around indexical pillars of venomous violence, devilish deceit and slippery seduction, their wretched quest to mesmerise others into undertaking acts taboo or forbidden.

Polly Morgan, Another Look, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder34 x 34 x 7 cm (13 3/8 x 13 3/8 x 2 3/4 in)

Polly Morgan, Another Look, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder34 x 34 x 7 cm (13 3/8 x 13 3/8 x 2 3/4 in)

Another Look (2025) offers another polystyrene piece of packaging now cast in polyurethane, however, form, in tandem with the snake as both sign and signifier, now digs a little deeper into the various indices of cultural significance that the snake embodies. The work appears like a flower head with twelve distinct petals, each one powdered in cosmetic, candied opalescence. This dodecagonal wheel turns around a rainbow of mythologies, traversing time, the Zodiac, Judaeo-Christian narratives such as The Stations of the Cross, to name but a few. A propulsion that serves to enrich the consistency and complexity of the snake’s signification as iconic protagonist (the subject of the object) and emblem of deception (the object of its subject) throughout time.

Yet the vein of deceit here runs deeper than that evinced by the mere presence of our villainous snakes. As we know, deception lies in the very mechanics of Morgan’s sculptural mimesis and, most assuredly, in her use of cosmetics to colour and finish her sculptures. The packaging mimicked here is one used to transport real make up: any kind of glittery dust or lustrous lotion, lip-smacked with the desire and expectation of its buyer and used by them to make faces and bodies appear sexier, younger, more desirable. Makeup, by its very definition, is both a product and action that reeks of deception: the aim is to conceal, airbrush, contour, correctand bronze. Words that suggest hiding, rearrangement, pretence or solidification but, at the makeup counter, sing hymns to everlasting attraction and makeup’s prayed-for propensity to seduce and secure.

IV: BEAUTY AND HORROR

Morgan’s clever incorporation of object, subject and its indexical effervescence when embroiled in juxtaposition, unveils more than the dynamo of seduction. Empty snakes inside empty packaging, coated with the abandoned makeup that it originally protected but which is now made deliberately redundant by the artist’s use of it not to beautify but to estrange, speaks to a darkness that goes beyond the mere skin of temptation. Stretching underneath the vacuous superficiality of makeup, guided by the serpent’s vicious sting, is a road that leads beauty into crucibles of horror, and it is this abhorrence, felt so acutely by Morgan, that is the very essence of this Scene. A horror born not of beauty, but of the often-maniacal desire for it and the unforgiving industry that serves such lust.

Polly Morgan, Meet Your Needs, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, resin, laburnum, feathers and ebony34 x 16 x 15 cm (13 3/8 x 6 1/4 x 5 7/8 in)

Polly Morgan, Can We Tempt You?, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, resin, laburnum and ebony50 x 26 x 24 cm (19 3/4 x 10 1/4 x 9 1/2 in)

Polly Morgan, Meet Your Needs, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, resin, laburnum, feathers and ebony34 x 16 x 15 cm (13 3/8 x 6 1/4 x 5 7/8 in)

Polly Morgan, Can We Tempt You?, 2025, Polyurethane, acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, iridescent powder, resin, laburnum and ebony50 x 26 x 24 cm (19 3/4 x 10 1/4 x 9 1/2 in)

Atop a laburnum plinth, also displayed as the sum of three parts in extruded progression just like Explore the Range, Morgan has placed three small lipsticks. At times the laburnum wood is partially sanded and polished to an almost mirror-like shine; at other times the artist leaves it untouched, still covered in its protective bark; a strategy of display that already announces a discord between the natural and the artificial. The uncanniness continues the longer one looks at the object. The gild and shine of the cosmetic in Meet Your Needs (2025) begins to betray a texture more organic – ligneous and downy - and when one looks closer at the lipstick and those tiny triangles of crimson, ostensibly protecting its greasy, expensive tongue, they begin to look like the gaping mouths of hungry baby birds. It’s an image one cannot ‘unsee’ once seen. The birds’ need for survival and the horror of their hunger now underpins the rather birdbrained desire for beauty that makeup so easily satiates. The distinction between the two could not be more urgently made, and yet Morgan does so with a simple object that only makes the horror more repulsive. Likewise, horror awaits those who dare to open Can We Tempt You? (2025), another object presented on a laburnum plinth, this time pretending to be a perfume box covered in snakeskin but which, when opened, reveals itself as the fangy mouth of a snake about to strike. Incorporated into the display of both these works are small blocks of ebony: a wood that symbolises both protection and power as Morgan riffs on shop or window displays that function solely to tempt, tease and then coerce its ‘buyer’, much as the snake does its ‘victim’.

Polly Morgan, We Miss You, 2025, Zebrano, Olivewood, Walnut, Wenge, Ebony, Cedar, Maple, Oak, Thuya Burl, Tulipwood, Rosewood, plywood, wood filler and varnish, Individual dimensions: 35 x 8 x 2 cm (13 3/4 x 3 1/8 x 3/4 in), total dimensions variable

Polly Morgan, We Miss You, 2025, Zebrano, Olivewood, Walnut, Wenge, Ebony, Cedar, Maple, Oak, Thuya Burl, Tulipwood, Rosewood, plywood, wood filler and varnish, Individual dimensions: 35 x 8 x 2 cm (13 3/4 x 3 1/8 x 3/4 in), total dimensions variable

V: LESS MEANING LESS

It is, however, in We Missed You (2025) that horror slowly shows its face the clearest, even if the object itself remains decidedly ambiguous, both in isolation and as an actor in the drama Morgan directs with her Scene. Executed in marquetry with veneers on plywood, Morgan has (once again) turned to Nature to turn in on herself. The soft, basal tones of these wooden strips is now blemished by pop-up notifications, sent from an unknown vendor from an unknown number announcing the availability of unwanted products. The horror here is not signified by the language of form or even the syntax of signification. The horror rests in the care and consideration the artist takes to conjure something so utterly trivial through the very theft of Nature – physically and emotionally.

It is this paragon of pointlessness that most keenly reveals Morgan’s intent to create a body of work that speaks to our world so addled by less meaning because we do not seek what is meaningful but, rather, what is easy and quick. Ours is a world that, today, reveals itself in fifteen seconds’ worth of mute scrolling on social media apps. It explains itself in digital speech bubbles written in a hybrid of text, acronym and emoji. This is not a world designed or equipped for thoughtful consideration. Bereft of real time and plagued by a simultaneity made ever more pressing and problematic by developments in artificial intelligence, life today is less meaningful. There is no space to test, no room to think, nowhere to grow.

The puerile consumerism that so hampers us is embedded in the title of Morgan’s show like a mantra. Imagine sitting on a plane and hearing ‘any gifts or gadgets?’ repeatedly as the air stewards trolleyed up and down the plane’s aisle. Every utterance adding more pus to its own boil; more fire to your own fury. Now imagine hearing that mantra following the shocking loss of a beloved sibling. As Morgan has written, such grief formed itself “… like a blister … around a wound … [offering] … a new lens through which to view the relentless thrust of the modern world”. It is with this sharpened eye and mind that Morgan has created a show that unpicks at consumerism’s need and greed to be digested immediately; a dynamic that leaves only just enough time for the consumer to skim across the surface of life, hopefully protected by its sparkling powders and covered in its pearly paints, all of which are meant to hide you from the snakes but, instead, simply turn you into one. That is enough to get you by during these days of emotional and intellectual anaesthetisation and that is the true horror Polly Morgan speaks of so eloquently and with such personal punch.

Matt Carey-Williams

Sandy Lane, Wiltshire

22-24 February, 2025