Holly Murray’s Pharmakon
Holly Murray’s challenging aesthetic falls within the tradition of art as direct social commentary and consciousness-raising. These important topics are conveyed in paintings that are pastiches of repetitive mythic and contemporary iconic images rendered in organic colors embodying ample content for deep reading.
Murray concerns are ambitious and compassionate. Her topics range from a critique of the banality of middle-class consumption, to a chilling depiction of domestic violence, to revealing the complications of biological engineering, to the invasiveness of commercially based science. Murray’s work is a welcome counter-propaganda to the banal and unreflective images offered by the media that we numbly count as information. Her work is educational in the best sense.
To prosecute her case, Murray appropriates the tropes of propaganda in her paintings. Her choice of this mode of expression successfully summons our unreflective trust. In her next move, Murray subverts that comfort as we read the challenging content she offers. In this way she shakes us from our complacency and demands we be reflective and critical.
In surveying her opus[body] of work and its many themes, one topic persists: invasiveness. Invasiveness comes in many forms in Murray’s work: bodily, culturally, and psychologically. This invasiveness can be found in Murray’s themes such as: how marketing has cannibalized family values, how violence invades the home, how both disease and genetic engineering enter and alter our bodies, and how species march into other species’ domains both malevolently and beneficially. Her two most recent shows “Good Breeding” and “Swarming Bees” have solidified her approach to deconstructing and exploring this theme.
Good Breeding
“Good Breeding,” completed in 2003, presents the viewer with seventeen paintings that depict the benefits and costs of bioengineering. The title is a pun on the instrumentality of genetically managed breeding by science, and the notion of social class and privilege that is reflected in “good breeding.” Before the content of the paintings is fully cognized, we are transported to an innocent state. The difficult topics are rendered in a visual imagery that is reminiscent of educational and propaganda posters. The paintings are replete with simple two-dimensional images, repetitive icons, and soft colors. Murray uses repeated images in the fashion of Warholian commercialism and the icons of Asian religious art. Warhol numbs us into submission with the appropriated repetitive images of the familiar; Asian art reifies the holy with its formal repetition of images. Murray is aware of how repetition and integration of images count as simulating knowledge and authority. Her icons (diagrams of brains, Siamese twins, streptococcus-like strands of germs, milk bottles, clouds, bull horns) populate numerous paintings integrating her theme and exploring its facets. This repetition emulates the methods of propaganda as well diffusing such images among her paintings mimicking the mechanism of genetic transmission.
The sum of these affects is imagery that is nostalgic and elicits a childlike trust. Yet, as the content emerges each painting speaks to a complex concern about manipulation, gestation, uncertainty, and the monstrous. Murray’s work gently invites us in, and then dismantles our trust and quiescence. She manipulates us in the same manner of those she accuses of duping us, and in so doing reveals their methods and our gullibility and latent desire for authority.
For example, Murray uses the repeated image of conjoined twins among numerous paintings in this work. In the piece, “Life in Bottle,” an image of the twin is initially confusing as one of the conjoined twins is diminutive. There is an initial bewilderment as to whether the image is of a mother with child, or a conjoined twin. We are lead to the warm feeling of motherhood, and then this archetype is subverted by the revulsion and sadness as we recognize the conjoined twins.
Murray does not stop here: in a subsequent piece she mixes this image with allusions to cancer. An image of a crab is juxtaposed with the conjoined twin in “A Very Brief History” (the crab is the astrological symbol for the sign Cancer). Now the child/conjoined twin is interpretable as a cancerous growth. This confusion and conflation of imagery leaves us pondering about archaic ideas of destiny and luck in conjunction with contemporary notions of genetics and randomness. As with all substantial works of art, our perception evolves and surprises us with continued viewing.
This puzzlement about the identity of the twins highlights Murray’s concern with the two outcomes of experimental science: success and error. Murray sees science promoting itself to the public with rhetoric designed to evoke our trust. Science highlights its successes: science is knowing and certain and progressive. Murray reminds us that the scientific project has, in fact, ample uncertainty, errors, and difficult ethical and philosophical issues.
This uncertainty is depicted in her painting “Jumping Cows.” The work shows a collection of milk containers containing genetically modified material. With bottles in the foreground Murray depicts cows in the background in the style of Paleolithic cave paintings: in this way she indicates that our genetic experiments have us tampering with an ancient process. We do this at our risk. Murray questions the innovation of genetically modified foods and the rush to market. Will this innovation follow the same fate as tobacco and thalidomide? In reality such products turned out to be massive experiments with tragic results. She reminds us that we often lack awareness and immunity from such experiments.
The claim of science is that its mission it to establish order amongst the chaos in nature. Murray’s work highlights that the validity of this claim is inherently uncertain. We cannot know all the implications of what we do. We cannot fully know our destiny. We do not fully know what we are doing. Thus the attempt to contain chaos is a double-edged sword. With the safety comes emerges another problem. Murray feels these risks are repressed and is compelled to bring them to the foreground.
Swarming Bees
Murray’s most recent body of work, “Swarming Bees” explores possible solutions to the competing issues of individuality and cooperation in this complex era. Bees “swarm” when the hive grows too large to be effective; they need to divide and start another hive. They need to migrate to another location. It is a cooperative strategy for growth in this insect society. The swarming raises questions about migration, cooperation, and ecological integration.
This body of work contains twelve pieces, again integrated with repeating icons among the paintings. Murray employs the bee as a symbol of ecological integration with nature. The bee symbiotically traverses among floral species pollinating them to the plants’ benefit and also yielding fruit and vegetables to humans and other fauna, not to mention the production of succulent honey. The bee is idealized as an exemplar of social cooperation and natural assimilation. Her images allude to the bee’s beneficial invasiveness with flowers as juxtaposed with a skeptical view of the invasive of the commercial deployment of scientific knowledge that marks her show “Good Breeding.”
Numerous paintings in this opus appear as engineering signs. For example, in the piece “It’s For Your Own Good: II” the hexagons of the hive appear in numerous paintings, annotated with the draftsman-like marks of an engineering schematic. These signs are indicative of the possibility of knowledge we need to manage our world.
Given the theme of swarming for the sake of survival, Murray focuses on images of the queen bee’s reproductive organs in the piece “The Queen Rules.” This is a basic image of survival: the perpetuation of the species. The images are blood red in color and rendered in the fashion of an illustration in a science textbook. The reproductive organs are dissected from the queen bee for our examination. Murray’s appropriation of signs from science and engineering in this body of work suggests the possibility of knowledge of some sort, as well as portending a meta-narrative that could explain our complex world. This contrasts to “Good Breeding” that was [is] skeptical of such knowledge.
One of the most interesting pieces in this collection is “The Gift II.” This painting shows Hindu- like deities of the Balinese variety with satyr-like legs summoning a gigantic bee in a seeming act of respect and sacrifice. The juxtaposition of the ethereal Asian deity with earthy Grecian satyr-like legs and hooves is, in itself, a compelling image of the marriage of heaven and earth, of the abstract and the concrete, of the East with the West. The deity and the bee are in harmony, transacting some matter of mutual concern. The image is rendered in gold with repetitive cloud images (used in a number of the pieces in this opus of work), harkening to the recurring motifs used in Tibetan thangkas. This image nicely expresses Murray’s integrative and hopeful impulse, now inter-special, with both species equal, respectful of each other, and consciously interdependent.
In “Swarming Bees” Murray recognizes our collective desire for a solution, but knows that all we can articulate at this moment in history are the tensions and oppositions. We cannot avoid these dichotomies. Murray recognizes that plausible grand narratives are absent, but we still long for an integrating myth to guide us. Holly Murray is aware that all solutions are a pharmakon: both cure and poison. In this way life and death, success and failure, trust and submission are partners in all we undertake. It is ambitious work with a Hegelian impulse to identify the polarities and then point to the outlines of a resolution.
Holly Murray’s challenging aesthetic falls within the tradition of art as direct social commentary and consciousness-raising. These important topics are conveyed in paintings that are pastiches of repetitive mythic and contemporary iconic images rendered in organic colors embodying ample content for deep reading.
Murray concerns are ambitious and compassionate. Her topics range from a critique of the banality of middle-class consumption, to a chilling depiction of domestic violence, to revealing the complications of biological engineering, to the invasiveness of commercially based science. Murray’s work is a welcome counter-propaganda to the banal and unreflective images offered by the media that we numbly count as information. Her work is educational in the best sense.
To prosecute her case, Murray appropriates the tropes of propaganda in her paintings. Her choice of this mode of expression successfully summons our unreflective trust. In her next move, Murray subverts that comfort as we read the challenging content she offers. In this way she shakes us from our complacency and demands we be reflective and critical.
In surveying her opus[body] of work and its many themes, one topic persists: invasiveness. Invasiveness comes in many forms in Murray’s work: bodily, culturally, and psychologically. This invasiveness can be found in Murray’s themes such as: how marketing has cannibalized family values, how violence invades the home, how both disease and genetic engineering enter and alter our bodies, and how species march into other species’ domains both malevolently and beneficially. Her two most recent shows “Good Breeding” and “Swarming Bees” have solidified her approach to deconstructing and exploring this theme.
Good Breeding
“Good Breeding,” completed in 2003, presents the viewer with seventeen paintings that depict the benefits and costs of bioengineering. The title is a pun on the instrumentality of genetically managed breeding by science, and the notion of social class and privilege that is reflected in “good breeding.” Before the content of the paintings is fully cognized, we are transported to an innocent state. The difficult topics are rendered in a visual imagery that is reminiscent of educational and propaganda posters. The paintings are replete with simple two-dimensional images, repetitive icons, and soft colors. Murray uses repeated images in the fashion of Warholian commercialism and the icons of Asian religious art. Warhol numbs us into submission with the appropriated repetitive images of the familiar; Asian art reifies the holy with its formal repetition of images. Murray is aware of how repetition and integration of images count as simulating knowledge and authority. Her icons (diagrams of brains, Siamese twins, streptococcus-like strands of germs, milk bottles, clouds, bull horns) populate numerous paintings integrating her theme and exploring its facets. This repetition emulates the methods of propaganda as well diffusing such images among her paintings mimicking the mechanism of genetic transmission.
The sum of these affects is imagery that is nostalgic and elicits a childlike trust. Yet, as the content emerges each painting speaks to a complex concern about manipulation, gestation, uncertainty, and the monstrous. Murray’s work gently invites us in, and then dismantles our trust and quiescence. She manipulates us in the same manner of those she accuses of duping us, and in so doing reveals their methods and our gullibility and latent desire for authority.
For example, Murray uses the repeated image of conjoined twins among numerous paintings in this work. In the piece, “Life in Bottle,” an image of the twin is initially confusing as one of the conjoined twins is diminutive. There is an initial bewilderment as to whether the image is of a mother with child, or a conjoined twin. We are lead to the warm feeling of motherhood, and then this archetype is subverted by the revulsion and sadness as we recognize the conjoined twins.
Murray does not stop here: in a subsequent piece she mixes this image with allusions to cancer. An image of a crab is juxtaposed with the conjoined twin in “A Very Brief History” (the crab is the astrological symbol for the sign Cancer). Now the child/conjoined twin is interpretable as a cancerous growth. This confusion and conflation of imagery leaves us pondering about archaic ideas of destiny and luck in conjunction with contemporary notions of genetics and randomness. As with all substantial works of art, our perception evolves and surprises us with continued viewing.
This puzzlement about the identity of the twins highlights Murray’s concern with the two outcomes of experimental science: success and error. Murray sees science promoting itself to the public with rhetoric designed to evoke our trust. Science highlights its successes: science is knowing and certain and progressive. Murray reminds us that the scientific project has, in fact, ample uncertainty, errors, and difficult ethical and philosophical issues.
This uncertainty is depicted in her painting “Jumping Cows.” The work shows a collection of milk containers containing genetically modified material. With bottles in the foreground Murray depicts cows in the background in the style of Paleolithic cave paintings: in this way she indicates that our genetic experiments have us tampering with an ancient process. We do this at our risk. Murray questions the innovation of genetically modified foods and the rush to market. Will this innovation follow the same fate as tobacco and thalidomide? In reality such products turned out to be massive experiments with tragic results. She reminds us that we often lack awareness and immunity from such experiments.
The claim of science is that its mission it to establish order amongst the chaos in nature. Murray’s work highlights that the validity of this claim is inherently uncertain. We cannot know all the implications of what we do. We cannot fully know our destiny. We do not fully know what we are doing. Thus the attempt to contain chaos is a double-edged sword. With the safety comes emerges another problem. Murray feels these risks are repressed and is compelled to bring them to the foreground.
Swarming Bees
Murray’s most recent body of work, “Swarming Bees” explores possible solutions to the competing issues of individuality and cooperation in this complex era. Bees “swarm” when the hive grows too large to be effective; they need to divide and start another hive. They need to migrate to another location. It is a cooperative strategy for growth in this insect society. The swarming raises questions about migration, cooperation, and ecological integration.
This body of work contains twelve pieces, again integrated with repeating icons among the paintings. Murray employs the bee as a symbol of ecological integration with nature. The bee symbiotically traverses among floral species pollinating them to the plants’ benefit and also yielding fruit and vegetables to humans and other fauna, not to mention the production of succulent honey. The bee is idealized as an exemplar of social cooperation and natural assimilation. Her images allude to the bee’s beneficial invasiveness with flowers as juxtaposed with a skeptical view of the invasive of the commercial deployment of scientific knowledge that marks her show “Good Breeding.”
Numerous paintings in this opus appear as engineering signs. For example, in the piece “It’s For Your Own Good: II” the hexagons of the hive appear in numerous paintings, annotated with the draftsman-like marks of an engineering schematic. These signs are indicative of the possibility of knowledge we need to manage our world.
Given the theme of swarming for the sake of survival, Murray focuses on images of the queen bee’s reproductive organs in the piece “The Queen Rules.” This is a basic image of survival: the perpetuation of the species. The images are blood red in color and rendered in the fashion of an illustration in a science textbook. The reproductive organs are dissected from the queen bee for our examination. Murray’s appropriation of signs from science and engineering in this body of work suggests the possibility of knowledge of some sort, as well as portending a meta-narrative that could explain our complex world. This contrasts to “Good Breeding” that was [is] skeptical of such knowledge.
One of the most interesting pieces in this collection is “The Gift II.” This painting shows Hindu- like deities of the Balinese variety with satyr-like legs summoning a gigantic bee in a seeming act of respect and sacrifice. The juxtaposition of the ethereal Asian deity with earthy Grecian satyr-like legs and hooves is, in itself, a compelling image of the marriage of heaven and earth, of the abstract and the concrete, of the East with the West. The deity and the bee are in harmony, transacting some matter of mutual concern. The image is rendered in gold with repetitive cloud images (used in a number of the pieces in this opus of work), harkening to the recurring motifs used in Tibetan thangkas. This image nicely expresses Murray’s integrative and hopeful impulse, now inter-special, with both species equal, respectful of each other, and consciously interdependent.
In “Swarming Bees” Murray recognizes our collective desire for a solution, but knows that all we can articulate at this moment in history are the tensions and oppositions. We cannot avoid these dichotomies. Murray recognizes that plausible grand narratives are absent, but we still long for an integrating myth to guide us. Holly Murray is aware that all solutions are a pharmakon: both cure and poison. In this way life and death, success and failure, trust and submission are partners in all we undertake. It is ambitious work with a Hegelian impulse to identify the polarities and then point to the outlines of a resolution.
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