LARVAE

 

Hubert Duprat’s aquatic caddis-fly larvae. Duprat leaves precious materials in aquatic tanks such as gold, turquoise, tiny pearls and lets the larvae spin exoskeletal cases for themselves to live in. They look astoundingly beautiful.The larvae didn’t build random cases – they built carefully constructed stripes of different materials – so on any given case there might be one stripe of pearls followed by bands of gold or pearls.

The larvae are shown in a tiny strip like aquarium. The day I attended his exhibition there was an older larvae struggling to drag its gilded case behind it. Its torso seemed to be straining with effort. I guess it was a metaphor for the labour involved in accruing material and the literal physical drag of materialism.