Art News

Polly Morgan’s Psychopomps on View at Haunch of Venison

LONDON.- Psychopomps is Polly Morgan’s first solo exhibition with Haunch of Venison. It consists of four suspended taxidermy sculptures, each poised between metamorphosis and flight. Named Psychopomps after the mythical creatures that conduct souls into the after-life, their historical representation includes Hermes and Charon from Greek mythology, the Valkyries from Norse myth, Anubis the jackal-headed Egyptian God, and in various cultures, horses, bees, birds and shamans. In Morgan’s vision, they are represented as a fabulous troupe made up of flying machine, a bright red cardinal held in a human ribcage carried by balloons, and two winged cornucopias. The flying machine offers a fantastical inversion of the life of a caged bird. Rather than imprisoned, these flame-coloured finches fly above their cage, carrying it off