This series is a modern-day memento mori or vanitas; a meditation on mortality, ephemerality and the sweet melancholy of human existence.

Appearing here as a recurring theme, the elusive fly has long been associated with decay and the passage of time in art, literature and religion; as a detail in Virgin and Child paintings, for example, where it may allude to the corruption of flesh, and as a symbol of transience in Flemish Baroque flower paintings.

In the Babylonian Talmud it is a symbol for the evil inclination “that dwells between the two entrances of the heart” (Berachot 61a), whilst as personified in the form of Beelzebub or Ba’al Zevuv, the Biblical Canaanite god and Lord of the Flies, it becomes a demon of high rank, "than whom, Satan except, none higher sat." (Milton, Paradise Lost).

C.Y. FRANKEL