Angela Singer

Essex-born Angela Singer is a British New Zealander now based in Carterton. Since the 1990s, her art has explored the consequences of humanity’s destructive relationship with the natural world, and navigated the permeable membrane separating us from other species.

Singer primarily works in mixed-media sculpture (including modelling clay, wax, fibre, ceramics, gemstones, and vintage jewellery, recycled wool, silk and cotton) often combined with traditional hunting taxidermy, inviting audiences to consider the exploitative power imbalance inherent in the concept of a ‘trophy animal’. 

Through a process she calls ‘de-taxidermy’, Angela reveals the wounds each animal endured before death and makes stark the suffering which traditional taxidermy obscures. However, adorning the animals with vintage jewellery and gems, she incites tension between attraction and repulsion, inviting viewers to look closer, and to question how the animals came to be dead in the first place. 

A passionate advocate for animals, Angela is not a taxidermist and has never had a living creature harmed or killed for her art.