Featured Marketplace Researcher: Melissa Pierce Murray
Melissa Pierce Murray, ‘Stasis’ (2017) steel, glass, 5 x 7 x 5 cm
We live in a time when human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems is so marked that some scientists propose that we consider this a distinct subdivision of the geologic timescale of the Earth, informally called the Anthropocene. The natural world is a churning, chaotic space. More than any other species, humans shape, arrange and manipulate their physical environments, driven by an instinct to seek pattern, create order, imbue meaning in physical and conceptual spaces.
Framing Experience is an interactive table top mini exhibition where audiences create and photograph arrangements using a sculpture kit of elements crafted from natural and manmade materials. The photographs collected from these interactions reveal the patterns of thinking and range of approaches that participants use to order and construct sense of a shifting and unstable environment.
Melissa Pierce Murray, ‘Shift’ (2017), ceramic, dimensions variable (10-30 cm diameter)
Profile
Melissa Pierce Murray creates physical metaphors which equally evoke emotional states and forces of immense landscapes. Informed by poetry, physics and dance, she uses a tactile engagement with materials to explore boundaries between interior and exterior worlds, juxtaposing an emotional response against intellectually and culturally constructed narratives.
She is currently developing Danger, a four-part series of installations (Stasis, Shift, Power, Collapse), which explores the precarious resilience she sees in how humans relate to physical environments and to each other at district locations around the globe. Precipitous sculptural installations assert dynamic and powerful lines while handheld objects reveal the marks of abrading and shaping. Edgy, alluring, or awkward, her works are to be encountered, inviting a reflective or felt response.
Melissa was raised in the mountains of Colorado, and at university studied English Literature and Physics, raced bicycles and performed dance. She subsequently moved to the UK, where she retrained as a sculptor and undertook numerous private commissions in steel, stone and bronze. In 2015 she completed an MA Fine Art.
Images c. Melissa Pierce Murray