User:Jozappa/Charlie Murphy (artist)

Charlie Murphy is an artist currently based in London, UK, whose work includes photography, sculpture, video and participatory events. Her work has been presented in galleries, museums, and art galleries, both in the UK and internationally, including the Venice Biennale 2005, Tate Modern, London’s Science Museum and The Science Gallery, Dublin. She is based at ACAVA studios, London and has been as ArtSway Artist Associate since 2003.

Trained in fine art and photography, Charlie Murphy’s work explores intimacy, sexuality and the competitive aspects of human nature. Through photographic, performative and sculptural processes, video, installations and live art events, Murphy creates contexts in which a variety of people are invited to perform.

Recurrent materials in her practice include glass, light, fibre-optics, photographic papers and emulsions, latex and ribbons, and has expanded to involve the participation and contributions of a large number of people. Murphy is drawn to sensual and territorial behaviours and her work reveals a whole secret world of unspoken sexuality and pleasure in the rituals and customs of rural and domestic life.

Other projects explore the resonances and readings of glass - creating delicate sculptural interpretations and impressions of plant and human sexuality or capturing explosions of refracted light through photogram processes on a large scale.

Murphy lectures in Photography at Kingston University, the University of Gloucester, the Arts University College at Bournemouth and the University of East Anglia.

EDUCATION AND AWARDS
MA in Fine Art (Photography), Royal College of Art, 1999.

LIVE / PERFORMANCE WORK
The Big Wheel: a live cartwheel chain event performed on London’s Millennium Bridge by over 150 participants for The Mayor’s Big Dance Festival. The longest ever acrobatic chain to be staged in London, this was created in collaboration with several gymnastic clubs and hosted by Tate Modern.

Country Dancing on the Circle Line (2004)

Seaside Sheep Show (2006), produced in collaboration with Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

Opening: a performance and sculptural installation for Sugarcoated at Artsway (2006),

Salute: an ongoing performance work for tall ships, involving maritime training, aerial and dance choreography and a long term research and training project in flying trapeze. Kiss-ins: for the past ten years, Charlie Murphy has been collecting kisses from all over the world by asking participants to donate their kisses to her trademark ‘kiss-in’ events. Murphy and her assistants invite couples, friends, and strangers to kiss for 90 seconds, while a dental alginate sets in their mouths. These casts are then turned into unique glass sculptures through an series of positive and negative mould making processes.

“Each mouth and way of kissing creates a unique expression of desire; a wet writhing form delivered like a birth from their mouths” [Charlie Murphy]

The kiss-in events have toured at the following places:

2009 An Experiment in Kissing, the Dana Centre, The Science Museum

2007 kiss-in-FORM, London Art and Design Fair, Olympia

2006 kiss-in-burgh for Escalator / East to Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival

2006 kiss-in-between for 'In-between time' festival at Arnolfini, Bristol

2005 La Kiss-innale, for the Venice Biennale at CZ95, Giudecca

2002 kiss-in-Essex, Colchester Arts Centre & BIG-kiss-in, Big Chill Festival

2002 Holy kiss-in-291 staged for Channel 4. Television, 291 Gallery, London

2002 kiss-in-Rotterdam, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Motel Mozaique Festival, Netherlands

2002 kiss-in, National Live Art Performance Platform, The Arches, Glasgow

2001 kiss-in event for ‘Fluid’ exhibition, Wolverhampton City Art Gallery

2001 kiss-in, Expo / Now Festival, Nottingham

2001 kiss-in-Lift, LIFT Festival, London

2001 kiss-in-East, East End Collaborations, London

2001 kiss-in-Valentine, Shoreditch Gallery / The Juggler, London

2000 kiss-in Valentine event, HOAX Gallery, London

Show Multiples Show Multiples refer to Murphy's Rosette Multiples, which appropriate and celebrate the conventions of country fairs, agricultural and sporting events by creating awards for unrecognized achievement and allegiance and offer playful and irreverent comments upon a variety of social contexts and values.

KEY WORKS
The Anatomy of Desire (1999- 2010) This project presents some of the fleeting experiences and dialogues of intimacy and desire through a series of glass sculptures, video and latex works exploring erotic spaces and expressions through a variety of positive and negative forms.

The Big Wheel (2008) Live Cartwheel Chain performance on London’s Millenium Bridge

The Art of Tickling Trout and other Sensual Pleasures (2003) A suite of over 22 short videos offer pertinent and suggestive comments upon everyday bucolic activities through a series of studies of the handling, stroking, rubbing, milking and harnessing of animal assets through a sculptural installation of projections, related artefacts and research materials, presenting insights into the relationships and dynamics involved in the handling and controlling of animals.

Linnaeus This series of delicate glass sculptures celebrates the rampant plant sexuality hidden among the botanical collections of The Museum of Garden History and The Linnaean Society. Interpreting a famous illustration of Linnaeus’s ‘Sexual System’ by ‘Ehret’ from 1736, Murphy draws on her own fantastical hybrids of desire and longing through delicate, colourful glass.

Salute Performance staged in the rigging of Tall Ships, transforming a beautiful maritime peace gesture into flamboyant visual theatre. Presenting an irreverent Tall Tale of flirtation and courtship,the story unfolds with cartwheels, Can Cans and synchronized signaling sequences.

Combining interpretations of maritime ceremony and signalling with aerial and dance choreographies, this event celebrates the courage and skills of the sailors who worked 'aloft' through an array of synchronised movements and aerial stunts.

Cut Glass & Plant Harlotry photogram series (2004-ongoing) Referencing early 'photogenic' drawings by Fox Talbot and trompe l'oeil, Murphy’s photogram images present mysterious gothic spectres of longing and desire. Prints from her ‘Optic’, 'Cut Glass' and 'Plant Harlotry' series, present plays of light and shadow amongst verdant foliage and the glittering glacial vistas of an exquisite chandelier emporium. Murphy has transformed the photogram into a unique theatrical process, using exaggerated scales and dazzling explosions of refraction across a grand cinematic format.

Exploring romantic and spatial relationships of glass and plant life, each image represents a diagrammatic record of this refractive performance and celebrates the unique qualities of direct photographic recording.

COLLECTIONS
Hayley Newman, Tate Modern; The Linnaean Society, London;  University of Aberystwth; Danielle Arnaud, London; Vic Reeves.

PUBLICATIONS
The Anatomy of Desire, published by text+work, the Arts University College at Bournemouth, 2010. Includes essays by Luce Irigaray, Leonore Tiefer and Alistair Gentry. ISBN 978-0-901196-41-5

Plant Harlotry, booklet published to accompany exhibition at Dissenters' Chapel, 2007

Sugarcoated, ArtSway, 2006, ISBN 978-0954393076

The Art of Tickling Trout and Other Sensual Pleasures, ArtSway, with essay by Kathy Kubicki, 2003, ISBN 978-0954393014

Rosette Contribution to Fash’n’Riot, Artist Limited Edition publication toured in British Council exhibition, 2002 & 2004

The Glass Border, exhibition catalogue, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, 1999

Light Sensitive, York City Art Gallery, 1998

Everyone In Farnham, Cornerhouse & James Hockey Gallery, Farnham 1994

== REFERENCES  ==

www.charliemurphy.co.uk

Charlie Murphy at ArtSway

Kensal Green past exhibitions

Charlie Murphy at Plymouth Arts Centre

The Guardian online

== EXTERNAL LINKS  ==

Artist website