Have you had a productive day?
2023, Single channel video, 7mins 38
Commissioned by The Serpentine Gallery, London.
‘From fungal infections to children playing with a spider, the interactions between lifeforms here are unidealised, taking place in car parks and living rooms, as much as in ‘wild’ environments.‘
Text: Fiona Glen
Solo exhibition, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2023)
‘Pests, piss and frog genitalia. From the xenomorphic strangeness of quivering rat tail maggots and darting mosquito larvae to humour tales of intergenerational urination and the disarming security measures of human embryo preservation services, the works comprising El Morgan’s exhibition Tale of the Frozen Bits unfold a fragmentary yet intimately involving narrative of the biological, political and commercial traceries that undergird both the practices and popular imaginaries of fertility.’
Text: Jamie Sutcliffe, ‘Cruising the Coldscape: El Morgan’s Anecdotal Science Fictions’
House of the Eight Eyes
2021, Single Channel video, 5mins 41
Commissioned for Le Mostra della Laguna by Sale Docks, Venice (2021)
Travel up the nostrils to a house ruled by animals with eight legs, two eyes, long tongues and many sighs. Sex happens on Wednesdays. There is kinship here, along with killing.
Travel up the nostrils to a house ruled by animals with eight legs, two eyes, long tongues and many sighs. Sex happens on Wednesdays. There is kinship here, along with killing.
About
I am an artist and writer working with video, sculpture, printmaking and performance to explore our relationship with other animals. This has included serenading a spider, making a diamond from the dead creatures of the River Thames and embracing a giant green sea anemone. My illustrated book Gossamer Days: Spiders, Humans and Their Threads (Strange Attractor/MIT press, 2016) examines the history of the human uses of spider silk, from gun sights to sticky tunics via acoustic lures and royal underwear. It was chosen by The Guardian as one of their favourite books of the year.
I was the child who loved to stroke slugs, and I continue to bring this sticky interest to the world around me. After moving through twelve studios over the past twenty years, I now work from my converted garage in the East Midlands, where I can spend time looking under logs in the garden and watching the silverfish in the downstairs toilet. I keep a wasp’s nest on the windowsill beside me, next to a framed letter from David Attenborough and a beautiful poem about Marlene Dumas written by my friend Miranda Peake.
El Morgan (London, 1978). Recent exhibitions: Sampler (Performance, Raven Row, 2024);Have you had a productive day? (Commission, The Serpentine Gallery, 2023) Naissance (Group exhibition, Unit Gallery, London, 2023); Tale of the Frozen Bits (Solo, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2023); le Mostra della Laguna (Group exhibition, Sale Docks, Venice, 2021); 100 ways to say we (Group exhibition, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021).
I was the child who loved to stroke slugs, and I continue to bring this sticky interest to the world around me. After moving through twelve studios over the past twenty years, I now work from my converted garage in the East Midlands, where I can spend time looking under logs in the garden and watching the silverfish in the downstairs toilet. I keep a wasp’s nest on the windowsill beside me, next to a framed letter from David Attenborough and a beautiful poem about Marlene Dumas written by my friend Miranda Peake.
El Morgan (London, 1978). Recent exhibitions: Sampler (Performance, Raven Row, 2024);Have you had a productive day? (Commission, The Serpentine Gallery, 2023) Naissance (Group exhibition, Unit Gallery, London, 2023); Tale of the Frozen Bits (Solo, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2023); le Mostra della Laguna (Group exhibition, Sale Docks, Venice, 2021); 100 ways to say we (Group exhibition, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021).
Contact
You are very welcome to get in touch with me through email (emorganweb [at] gmail.com) or instagram. I also have more videos to view on my vimeo site.
👋️ Subscribe to Moments of Pleasure and recieve a new video and writing on creatures (human and nonhuman). There will be many legs, some stickiness, occasional cannibalism and a bit of gentle stroking.
You are very welcome to get in touch with me through email (emorganweb [at] gmail.com) or instagram. I also have more videos to view on my vimeo site.
👋️ Subscribe to Moments of Pleasure and recieve a new video and writing on creatures (human and nonhuman). There will be many legs, some stickiness, occasional cannibalism and a bit of gentle stroking.
