B A I TCover Up: landscape and natural history series
Charlie Murphy
Cover Up project space presents the continuation of a six-month forum of contemporary art engaged with natural history and landscape. Each exhibition takes place over three to six days and includes artists and curators from Europe and America. These events are not a comprehensive survey of their theme but rather a sequence of pipette samples from a broad territory of activity.
..this Tickling Art, be the Sauce and Relish to the most Luxurious Entertainments...
B A I T is a selection of recent video work which frames a whole secret world of unspoken sexuality and pleasure in the rituals and customs of rural and domestic life.
Murphys interest in language reveals an intimate history and observation of rural life, charting everyday bucolic activities in a series of studies of the handling, stroking, rubbing, milking and harnessing of animal assets.
Soften investigates the old poaching technique of tickling trout, a hypnotic predation by seduction in which the dynamics and fantasies of our power over nature are coaxed from under the river bank.
Turn plunges deep into a writhing mass of swirling, climbing eels, a mesmerising Medusa of unspoken yearning and profusion.
Joy is an orgy of apparently spontaneous jumping for joy that transforms the anglers gaze into a humorous meditation on anthropomorphism.
As part of a larger body of work The Art of Tickling Trout and Other Sensual Pleasures, these three intense vignettes offer a pertinent and suggestive comment upon the romanticisation of the bucolic, filling our vision with powerful and memorable images that map out the relationship of sex with the handling and controlling of animals.
The Art of Tickling Trout and Other Sensual Pleasures was originally produced for an exhibition at Artsway during a Navvygate Residency financially supported by Arts Council England, South East.
B A I T is presented in association with Danielle Arnaud contemporary art
Images and more information are available from Finlay Taylor on finlaysc@hotmail.com or Danielle Arnaud on danielle@daniellearnaud.com
Cover Up
25 Calvin Street London E1 6NWExhibition dates: 21st and 22nd June 1:00 5:30 pm
