The Anatomy of Desire and Other Experiments at Wellcome Collection
28 October 2011
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1999, Murphy has been inviting members of the public to collaborate with her to visualise spaces and shapes of desire. In this time, she has collected hundreds of casts from all over the world through performative 'kiss-in' events and open invitations, creating a wide range of sculptures that record unique moments of intimate human contact.
People are encouraged to contribute kisses to the collection in pairs and groups. A dental material (dental alginate) is spooned into their mouths, and they are asked to hold their poses for 90 seconds while the material sets.
Once an impression of the inside of the kiss has been taken, it is carefully wrapped and refrigerated. A complex series of positive and negative moulds are then made in wax and plaster before the kiss is fired in a glass kiln. The resulting sculptures are beautiful inside and out.
'The Anatomy of Desire' shows selected works from this continuing project, as well as new directions Murphy's work is taking through her continuing interest in performance and the processes of making.
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Murphy has developed a series of glass sculptures from direct impressions of intimate parts of the human body, offering challenging new representations of male and female positive and negative forms. Created in more private circumstances, this series again involved the participation of the public, who applied to receive their own personal casting kits and returned their contributions through the post.
Murphy is always interested in sharing the processes involved in making her work with the public. Alongside the human body and human desire, light and glass have been the principal materials of Murphy's art. She takes particular delight in exploring how these can be manipulated, with the processes of manipulation themselves often becoming the subject of her work.
Such is the case with her new video installation, 'Retort (Turning Circles)', created specifically for this exhibition and accompanied by an original score created by Jorge Queijo. The video celebrates the rhythms and skills of scientific glassblowing by a master of this dwindling trade, Raymond Tribe, with whom Murphy has often collaborated and from whom she learned many of the techniques employed in her artworks.
This installation is complemented by delicate new works in borosilicate glass, which include a tiny, theatrically staged sculpture of a hymen and a series of hand-drawn 'blood vessels' that form the centrepiece of the exhibit on the second floor.
'The Anatomy of Desire and Other Experiments' is on display at Wellcome Collection until 30 November 2011.
Top image: Kiss-in participants (the Rotterdam couple). Credit: Charlie Murphy.
