Animula, Mud Time Fissures and Tethered Descent

Hannah Morgan Animula, Mud Time Fissures in Tethered Descent 22nd June - 22nd July 2023 Detached from your mooring flotsam shudders into cavities your lung pushes salty air between the gaps Rocks pierce the horizon knowing their place Water wraps and warps your solid frame Feign interest weighty under the lights on your carcass waiting waiting waiting for the tide to turn The caress Xxijra Hii is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Hannah Morgan. ‘Animula’ is an ongoing series drawing on underland entanglements based on research in Scotland's caves and early mine cartography. Using excavation as an entry point, Morgan explores these relationships of matter and organisms, in states of emergence and decay. Central to the work are a new series of alabaster carvings depicting amorphous forms seemingly in a bio transformation. These carvings are woven into a winding network of vestibular forms, scattered schematics and algal ‘wet look’ surfaces. Morgan creates narrative through sculptural assemblage, text and audio that considers loss and transformative states of being, addressing the precarity of self and agency in the natural world. This precarity brings about a tension in the works, reflected in the nature of the subterranean and the radical potential these entangled states offer. A ‘happening’ as quick as the formations in pewter, or as slow as the growth of lichen can bring about a set of thread-like channels, all emanating at different pace - slow carving, meticulous metalwork, radial sound, and quick drawings all combining to create rhizomatic chambers of personal connection. These structures exist in plurality; growing inside, beneath and above us. They expand and gather to allow us to absorb vast states of ‘being’. A cortical folding made physical in steel, alabaster and dust; forming a map for cognitive reflection and wayfinding. The tension within these works feel as though they can burst open at times of pressure or transformation, revealing a precious gateway to the raw material within. It is in these materials we may find both wisdom and the uncanny. Each iteration of ‘Animula’ presents a new fissure, presenting new life in the form of installation and exposing elements of past decay and metamorphosis. Inspired by the ever-animated natural world beneath and inside us, Morgan relates personal experience to the formation of caves, slips of slime teaming with life, the natural world and time itself being a force we cannot assume control of and yet are inherently connected to. Sound work made in collaboration with Clay Slade. The second sound work in the series, mud time fissures is a vocal translation of the above text. Layered and punctuating the space adding material weight from above the forms.