Unmaking a Daisy

A brief non-microbiological and rather dangerous excursion!

A Daisy plucked from the garden and immersed in concentrated sulphuric acid. The acid has extracted its defining chemical signature and left behind a frail and now lifeless skeleton of carbon. The flower has succumbed to a cold pyrolysis but what made the daisy and gave it its identity is still present, having been conserved by chemical and physical laws. In a sense then, the flower is still there but its content has been reordered and distributed, but now where does the Daisy begin and end?

In the final work (below), simply entitled “Daisy”, the Daisy has been completely rendered into a viscous black, and still corrosive, liquid , which is presented in a 19th Century specimen jar from the Natural History Museum. The work thus invites the obsever to question the concept of preservation. The jar has been sealed since the introduction of the Daisy into the sulphuric acid, so nothing has been gained or lost from it , so that in a sense then the Daisy is still there, but its elemental make up has been reordered and distributed, by a relentless entropic process.