Afterlife is a vivid, physical, colourful and brightly painted work which shows many of the key elements of Jimmie Durham practice (attributes of mankind and animals, their life and past history).

Afterlife includes what appears to be a skeleton of a dog but is actually a brightly green painted plastic replica. The installation is complete with plastic pipes and what seems to be chemicals and oil, and other such industrial spillages, but are made of coloured acrylic gel. The Artist himself describes his installation as ‘beautiful death’, which, despite all that is going on in it, would look sparse, almost austere – if only it were not so cheerful.

For the artist, the general aspect of the work recalls an observation by Walter Benjamin that the rainbow colours in a thin film of oil on a puddle of rainwater is the best sign of modern times.