Farhana Rina: ARTIST TALK

SUSIE MACMURRAY

Susie Macmurray came to the university to do an artist talk about her work.

Macmurray is a British artist living and working in Manchester. Macmurray graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in 2000 with a BA in Sculpture and then went on to do MA in Fine Art at the same institution. Macmurray is also a former classical musician. Macmurray is an artist I had previously researched about while on my foundation course. The way Macmurray uses materials that’s are very fragile and lightweight to make interesting installations caught my eye and immediately took my attention. Macmurray is interested in work that is fragile likewise I am currently working with paper and making papercuts which eventually become fragile by the time I finish cutting.

The art piece by Macmurray that (in my opinion) is the most interesting and captivating is Echo, 2006. Echo is an installation that was designed by Macmurray in 2006 in the St Mary’s Castlegate church. It was a piece that was designed over the idea of memories. Macmurray mentioned in the talk that this piece was the work she was “most proud of”. She used many hairnets and filled them with violin strings to represent the sound of people and these were attached to long pieces of invisible wire and were dispensed from the ceiling. The finished piece looked magical and gave an enchanted feeling.

Echo 2006

Macmurray’s work has inspired me to carry on using paper as a material for my practical work because of the fragility and what it brings to the outcome of the papercuts. I felt this artist was quite different to other talks because she would tell the audience how she felt during each piece of work and what she would do to sometimes ‘get away’ and drawing would be the answer to most things and she would use it to get away from things and it would help become calm. Macmurray likes to get the audience involved in her work and generalise with her through it.