“That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are…” ( David Foster Wallace, The Pale King)

The catalogue for Claire Morgan’s new exhibition in Cologne, The Slow Fire, is being published next week. This beautiful catalogue contains some stunning images of Claire’s most recent sculptures and drawings, together with my latest essay on her work entitled “A Vibrant Silence”. This essay has also been translated into French, German and Italian for the catalogue.

“The ceaseless flow of time and place that marks the life of all living beings is halted with an acute poetic minimalism. The stillness produces an almost impenetrable sense of mystery. Each sculpture choreographs a strange imaginary confrontation between animality and the artifice of culture. These weird meetings bring the wounding severance of humankind from nature back to the surface. The disastrous consequences of our ongoing sublimation and degradation of nature through religious dogma, ideological obsessions, and technological possession are repeatedly enacted through acts of collision.” (Darren Ambrose, “A Vibrant Silence”)

‘If you turn outside yourself – to the birds and animals and the quickly changing places where they live – you may hear something beyond words. Even humans can find silence, if they can bring themselves to forget the silence they are looking for.’ (John Gray, The Silence of Animals)

‘My work is related to my own processes of coming to terms with understanding our relations with animals and with my own feelings of discomfort at everything in life being impermanent. All of my work eventually leads back to ideas about life, death, and the human condition. We are never really secure in any way, yet we yearn for the security of permanence in our lives.’ (Claire Morgan)