Mist

Mist extends research Marguerite conducted with a range of academics and experts around animal spirituality, and the belief that impending mass extinction rouses in animals a consciousness of their own mortality. Mist begins with the image of moonlight over flood-covered plains and a risen sea. Overhead, an acrylic container with water sourced from her trip is agitated by an air pump, programmed to the rhythm of the moon’s gravitational force at any given moment. Though unseen, toxic air imparts visible effects on semi-conscious creatures scattered around the gallery, whose forms evoke the organs used for breathing. The uncannily inert The Dead visualises a marine creature’s marooned, earthbound state, while The Prayer searchingly lifts itself skyward, as if trying to contend with the idea of death. Elsewhere, The Breathers perform an underwater ritual, letting off ocean water mixed with whale ‘tears’ that Marguerite obtained from cetacean anatomist Joy Reidenberg, who sourced the tears off the coast of British Columbia. Speaking to the role of evolution in a bid for survival, Marguerite’s electronic ‘aquarium’ meanwhile houses an ever-evolving choreography of a shoal of fishes performing a death-resuscitation dance, and a series of silicon and resin Waste sculptures depict hybrid creatures mutating into industrial refuse in their desperate attempt to adapt. Trapped within the gallery walls, a sound work titled The Mythteller invisibly roams, fated to repeat a story about a great deluge.