Room

Murray Temple has spent the last two years working on a large installation to be shown for the first time at the 291 Gallery. Room uses temporary office partitions to form 2m x 2m cells, like magnified petri dishes. The lay-out of the cells reflects a ‘rhizome labyrinth’ through which the viewer can walk. The interiors of each unit act as information cul de sacs or lay bys from which Temple extrapolates in order to examine, distort or simply by-pass various philosophical, psychoanalytical and scientific theories.

The Labyrinth suggests that direct comparisons between the rooms is problematic, with solid and permeable boundaries choreographing the route. Whether Room shows a possibility for multiplicitous connections or repeated stagnation is not clear. Thus, the metaphorical use of the word Labyrinth suggests a confusing situation in which there is no overview.

The 19 cells have varying titles such as God Room, Paradox Room and Luck Room. They explore the ways in which objects bear messages or signs, by grafting the overt materiality of an object with a latent surface manipulation. The bounded structures are the containers of repeated meanings as well as being boundaries in themselves. By looking at the form of the room as a structure of rules that contains another structure of rules, Room proposes how the principles of this and order might be displaced. This work is a manifestation of Temple’s long-term theme of attempting to fix temporal and spatial boundaries in order to contain investigative interiors.

Can there be material objects that operate like mental ones? Kant

The installation in the 291 Main Gallery dominates the 3,000 sq ft space. It is a work in progress featuring 19 out of a possible 47 units which are to be exhibited at a later date. An extensive 291 Gallery publication of writings by the artist accompanies the exhibition, “acting like Ariadne’s thread through the complexity of the Labyrinth” (Edwina Orr).

Murray Temple was born in 1968. She studied Chemistry at Sussex University followed by Fine Art at Central St Martins. She has worked as an assistant to a number of well-known artists, such as Richard Deacon. Temple was a researcher in the House of Commons and has been pursuing her solo art practice since 1995. Room at the 291 Gallery is Murray Temple’s first large solo exhibition. The complexity of this show reflects the 291 Gallery’s policy of blending multi-disciplinary art with science and philosophy.