Lauri Lynnxe Murphy 

https://www.laurilynnxemurphy.com/ 

Audio Transcript

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy’s inspiration is propelled by her horror at what she sees and reads about daily, and yet, is still a maker, transfixed by materials and the transformational impact of the hand. The past several years have seen a marked shift in her interests from abstraction to research-based artwork that reflects the urgency of her ecological and political concerns. Through working with honeybees and investigating the issues surrounding nuclear power following the tsunami-induced collapse of Fukushima, Murphy has expanded her practice to something that resonates more deeply with her moral imperative to communicate about urgent issues of global distress. Employing references to the souvenir and the miniature, the abject and the uncanny, she endeavors to make ideas and materiality meet by working with living systems, new technologies, and socio-politically charged materials and imagery.  

Some constants remain through the years that encompass a personal lexicon of signs. Vivid color, blobs, and fluid drips, biomorphic shapes, and tumorous forms travel through multiple bodies of work from drawings, to sculpture, to photography, reflecting a fascination with the interior spaces of the body, disease, mutation, the abject, and otherness. Murphy is interested in the beautiful only as a contrast to the grotesque, for, similar to death making life more meaningful, it is in these binary contrasts that we come to know the world we inhabit.  

For the past two years, Murphy has been working with colonies of honeybees within the systems of the hive in the creation of artworks. As this work is driven by the seasonal needs, whims, and timing of my tiny collaborators, she typically is engaged with multiple bodies of work at once, shifting between research, studio engagement, and work in the field. 

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy’s work in The Space(s) Between is Snail Drawing, Double Snail Drawing, both snail slime on hand-cut paper, 2019.