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Trained taxidermist Polly Morgan began working as an artist in 2005. Her work exploits her taxidermy skills in still life arrangements. She plays with conventions of both: the interaction of the wild subjects within the peculiar context of the civilised still life pose; the conceit of the dead animal frozen in a living pose. (via)

Clusters of quail chicks are often used in Morgan’s work to represent moss on the side of a derelict coffin, a swarm of maggots or a chorus of voices from a telephone receiver. Here she calls them Dead Heads; a term used to describe the decapitation of spent flowers, which can be read as a metaphor for the chicks’ own short lives.

Polly Morgan’s flickr