Space: 1460 E. 53rd St.
Artists: Heather Hartley & Casey Murtaugh
Website: theknotart.wordpress.com
Title: A Story Told…
Medium: Mixed Media Installation
Description: A Story Told… suspended in a window, like a nest that has been strewn apart, a home disheveled, the work conjures images of bones, archaic tools, history and impermanence. Constructed as a shower of 200 paper mache branches handmade from newspaper, yarn, and written contributions from past audience members, interwoven with natural branches, twine, found objects, and hundreds of shiny gold beads, Hartley and Murtaugh construct a visual metaphor that conjures our fleeting sense of memory. Inspired by grandmothers, ancestors, our shifting definition of “home” and the breathtaking speed with which we now remember, save, and forget, A Story Told… honors the shiny golden moments that stand out in family and cultural lore, and our methods of preserving those moments, all the while tempered by the reality that nothing is forever.
Statement: Working collaboratively on a variety of projects since 2005, Heather Hartley and Casey Murtaugh create a synthesis, a tying of a knot, between two art forms – visual installation and performance – and use this fusion between two women and their artistic disciplines as a springboard to create time based, kinetic, and evolving installations in site-specific locations. In 2010, WBEZ and Chicago Tribune critic Lucia Mauro described in her article for Examiner.com their most recent work, Tell Me A Story as “beautifully crafted…a bittersweet plunge into these women’s cherished possessions.”
Ongoing themes throughout their work include: the intensity and interdependence of the female connection; improvisation in response to audience, object, and environment; repetition of form and material; and the use of the human body as a generative tool that directly impacts on the structure of the resulting installation. Each installation is a living example of their feminine impact upon the space, a time capsule that reflects their visceral experience in visually specific terms. Their work has appeared at festivals and galleries in Chicago and New York, including: a variety of storefront windows in downtown Chicago, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art & Tjaden Experimental Gallery at Cornell University, in a gothic cathedral in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, amongst the trees in Grant Park and on the park grounds of an artist colony in Northern Indiana, in the intimate experimental theater of Links Hall, and numerous other galleries, festivals and outdoor spaces. Their work has been supported by grants from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and Hartley and Murtaugh both hold Master’s Degrees in Interdisciplinary Art from Columbia College Chicago.
Bios: Heather Hartley is a multi-disciplinary artist who works as a performer, movement artist, and creator of original pieces. She has performed in more than 35 productions since moving to Chicago in 1992, including works with Redmoon Theater, Collaboraction, Next Theater, the NeoFuturists, and she was a founding member of the award winning interdisciplinary performance collective, Running With Scissors. Heather began her performance career in dance works in NYC at St. Marks Church and the Merce Cunningham Studio, where she studied extensively. Inspired by frequent collaborator and partner in crime, Casey Murtaugh, they have been working together since 2005 to create a body of work that seeks to deepen the fusion of performance with visual art. Heather holds a BFA in Dance from the University of North Carolina and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago. www.heatherhartleyweb.com
Casey Murtaugh is a visual and performing artist inspired by ideas surrounding repetition, simple movement gestures, detail, line and shadows. Her work has been featured on the cover and in articles in “Lumpen” Magazine. Murtaugh was the curator and artistic co-director of Finch Gallery in Logan Square, a recipient of the Albert P. Weisman Award, and is currently an art installer at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has an undergraduate degree in painting from Illinois State University and a Graduate degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College.
