Peggy Atherton is a sculptor and a contemporary artist based in the UK. She is interested in how contemporary society relates to nature, cycles of life and decay. Using road kill animals as materials, she creates odd circumstances through gestures, rituals, materials or colours. Her sustained involvement with the processes of sculpture-making carries a playfulness. Disparate mix of elements, sometimes cast and sometimes presented in their own natural state, by juxtaposing mortality and hope with hints of humour. Found rabbits and a discarded Nike rucksack are cast together to create a narrative of the past and present. A complex relationship that is particularly pertinent with regards to global ecology and our impact on the environment.
"She says that her work is a "compulsion". She has "a thing about creatures that have been killed by cars" and she makes her art "as a protest against the traffic roaring past, and how we impose the way we inhabit the earth on animals." A title Peggy Atherton frequently uses for her sculptures and tableaux is Sleeping Beauties. Despite the macabre reality of her materials, she does indeed render the creatures beautiful by the careful arrangement of her sculptures. The fantasy is that the birds and animals are not dead but slumbering until the time they are magically reawakened."
Text by Angela Kingston, a freelance curator and visual arts writer.