Garden :: Marc Quin's silicone thumb

Despite the jarringly fresh colours of its extended botanical arrangement/memento mori, Quinn's Garden well deserves a place in Museum of Dust's own humble herbaceous reserve.



Marc Quinn : 'Self' 1991.
Blood, stainless steel, Perspex, refrigeration equipment
82 x 25 x 25 in. Picture from ArtNet


It was Quinn who was responsible for the equally delicious 'Self Portrait', several litres of his own blood frozen into a likeness of his own head. I believe that Saatchi owned it. I wonder whatever happened to it? Did it evaporate in the Gallery conflagration, made super-combustible through admixture with the Chapman lads' acrylic fantasies? Or did Nigella turn it into black sausage, served up fried with free-range eggs and truss-grown tomatoes?

Colder than Inky's eyes, the (liquid?) silicone preserves the abundance of freshly-cut flowers in perfect stasis on the threshold of morbidity.

"Garden (2000) by Marc Quinn is a real botanical garden, full of plants and flowers from all over the world. They are displayed in full bloom, and are potentially eternal: the nearly 1000 specimens are immersed in twenty-five tons of liquid silicone kept at a constant temperature of -80˚ Celsius. They can neither grow or perish, an unreal dimension that cannot exist unless produced artificially. And though frozen, they produce an enchantment of continuous spring."



Via Pruned

** Please note that this exhibit has been re-arranged and re-presented by order of MoD director, Ms de Plume.