681 - Jo Murray

681

Jo Murray’s piece—appropriately titled 681 because of the 681 ladybugs that have been glued side by side, organized by size, shape, color and dot intensity—is at once both a documentation of the sheer mass and variety of bugs that have piled up in the art studios of Bucksbaum, and a palpably visceral experience between the viewer and the 681 ladybugs.

The insects are organized in three separate arrangements, in minimalist forms. The central piece, a line stretching from one side of the board to the other, a single ladybug tall, is arguably the most successful. By arranging the ladybugs side by side without layering them or clumping them together, the number of ladybugs is clearly visible and the number of bugs is quickly comprehended. The other linear piece is similar, but it up to four ladybugs deep in some places.

Both these forms’ simple, minimalist arrangements are aesthetically pleasing and allow the viewer to move past the overall pattern to look closely at the ladybugs themselves. Because so much of the process of making the piece was about collecting, sorting through, and organizing the ladybugs by their different characteristics, the simpler arrangements allow the viewer to understand the groupings.

Using a completely different pattern, the third (top) piece distracts from the ladybugs. The vagueness of the ladybug shape resists being easily read and therefore inhibits closer viewing. Despite this, the three pieces still form a cohesive whole and meticulously catalog the bugs. Extended wings in one area and darker spots in another hint at the creation process and underlying organization.

Encased in clear plastic, the ladybugs can be experienced through touch as well. The tactile sensation of running your hand along the long lines of ladybugs is the same as actually feeling the bugs themselves, despite the layer of plastic separating them from you. Therefore, this creates an unsettling sensation of touching hundreds of insects, which triggered a feeling of disgust and revulsion for me, even though I’m not afraid of bugs.

The piece 681 is a work about recycling and reworking that which would normally be disregarded and thrown out. By recycling hundreds of dead ladybugs, art is created from something we would normally associate with trash. Moreover, 681 forces us to look carefully at the insects in the same way we do most other art, and thus exposes their own aesthetic beauty. We can distance ourselves from our insectophobia to appreciate their shimmering shells and the variance in color and dot pattern.

It also deals with time and the accumulation of objects in our lives, whether they’re desirable objects or not. The unwanted ladybugs nevertheless pile up around us as a metaphor for the way material objects often accumulate in our lives without us meaning them to. The process of reworking the bugs into art is an example of how interesting our surroundings often our, although we may not realize it.

The themes of repetition and accumulation remind me of some of Yayoi Kusama’s “obsessive art,” which is often covered by polka dots and uses repetition to talk about insanity. The seemingly obsessive acts of collecting and arranging insects are purposeful—they are arranged in horizontal lines, instead of swept together in a dusty clump.

The ladybugs have been handled and examined closely by the artist, and the narrative of that process becomes part of the story of the art. This then involves the viewer in the artist’s fascination with the insect world, and gives us a glimpse at an abnormal process, which becomes very interesting, especially as it was created as art for display, whereas a lot of obsessive, outsider art is only discovered posthumously. This obsessive organization of something we wouldn’t normally pay attention to fits with ideas of the mundane and neglected being portrayed in art. Through the piece, we’re ultimately allowed to take a closer look at what we value and why we react to the insects in the way we do.

--Christopher Squier