Animals built of glass inspire art exhibition at the UCL Grant Museum

'Glass Delusions' is a new exhibition at the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL featuring works by the Museum's Artist in Residence, Eleanor Morgan. Using prints, drawings, videos and objects Morgan explores the slippery boundary between living and non-living materials. Inspired by the Museum's collection of glass sponges, intricate deep-sea animals that naturally build themselves out of glass, the exhibition centres on the use of glass as a material, its cultural significance and the strange psychological phenomenon of humans believing they are made of glass known as the Glass Delusion. Building on conversations with biologists, chemists, geologists and engineers Morgan's work also looks at the challenge of re-animating a museum of dead creatures. The exhibition is a result of a yearlong residency at the Grant Museum, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. "Working with the zoology collection at the Grant Museum has been a real privilege," says artist Eleanor Morgan. "It's allowed me to spend time exploring these extraordinary glass sponge specimens that still seem entirely magical to me - the way in which life can be formed from the same material that we use to made windows".