LOSING IT: An exploration involving feelings of loss through Installations with ephemeral sculptures.
Losing It consists of three works – Drop, Knocked, and a video work (with sound) titled Pearls in Rain. Each work captures hesitation and anticipation with the use of recognisable situations – a trinket knocked over near the edge of a table, a beaded necklace about to fall off its string, and, water spilling from a tipped over vase. Murray feels that by focusing on these unseen events it allows you to pause and consider the everyday moments.
These works showcase Murray’s skills in using soap as an artistic material, as well as demonstrate her views on memory, moments and loss. She creates tableaus of moments often unseen, easily forgotten or quickly rectified without much thought. Soap being used as an artistic material has the capacity as a metaphor for memory and loss, to evoke the pondering of unrealised moments of loss and absence. Murray makes these soap objects look like glass and other items that usually get associated with holding sentiment, being fragile and preciousness.
Drop is string of soap beads measuring over two metres in length, suspended from the ceiling. It is frayed at the end that is touching the ground and surrounded by a selection of loose beads. The anxiety and anticipation that all could be lost and roll away is held frozen in a moment of ethereal stillness.
Knocked is a still life tableau capturing a moment often not seen, easily forgotten or quickly rectified without much thought. This is demonstrated with a vase of flowers knocked over with a puddle of water spilling over the top of a table. There is implied motion. However, this point in time is still and unmoving, preserved in soap.
Pearls in Rain is a video depicting the unseen aftermath of a lost personal belongings. The ownership, importance and story connected to this item is now lost forever, never to be reclaimed or reconnected with its owner. It is a one minute, seventeen second video with sound (looped), projected from above onto the floor. Filmed while it was raining, the beaded necklace lies motionless in a puddle on the footpath. Left alone with only the drops of rain accompanying it, as it sits and waits to be forgotten.
Christine Murray (she/her) is an ephemeral object-based artist with an interest in themes around memory, feelings and loss. Besides a Master of Fine Arts, she also has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from RMIT. It was during her undergraduate studies that she developed her smithing skills and then moved from contemporary jewellery to sculpture whilst completing her Honours year. Murray also has a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts (majoring in Animation and Digital Culture) from Deakin University.
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