Art Exhibit on Bill Murray Opens in the UK

Some­body get us Bill Mur­ray stat!

The actor and sec­u­lar saint has no direct involve­ment with BILL MURRAY: A Sto­ry of Dis­tance, Size, and Sin­cer­i­ty at the BALTIC Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Art but the inter­view with artist Bri­an Grif­fiths, above, sug­gests that he should.

The major­i­ty of cre­atives pig­gy­back­ing on Murray’s pop­u­lar­i­ty these days would seem to be entre­pre­neur­ial crafts­peo­ple, where­as Grif­fiths is a fine artist. Pre­vi­ous projects include a Romani wag­on com­prised of sec­ond­hand fur­ni­ture and a series of his­tor­i­cal­ly cos­tumed busts cast from actor Peter Lorre’s death mask.

BALTIC’s web­site pro­vides some con­text for the cur­rent instal­la­tion, a series of nine mod­el build­ings in var­i­ous archi­tec­tur­al styles, fes­tooned with Murray’s face and oth­er visu­al indi­ca­tors from his con­sid­er­able oeu­vre:

Bill Mur­ray is always authen­tic. He is con­sis­tent­ly ‘BILL MURRAY’. His sin­gu­lar­i­ty breaks into irre­ducible ambi­gu­i­ties and con­tra­dic­tions – Bill the glob­al super­star, the guy-next-door, anti-brand brand, irre­press­ible lothario, dig­ni­fied clown and droll philoso­pher. This exhi­bi­tion takes these and many oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics as an approach, turn­ing them into a fan­ta­sy car­i­ca­ture and a poet­ic tableau of scaled down archi­tec­ture and col­lec­tions.

Per­haps Grif­fiths was hav­ing an off day when the cam­era crew showed up to inter­view him about BILL MURRAY: A Sto­ry of Dis­tance, Size, and Sin­cer­i­ty. A Cre­ative Art Prac­tice stu­dent who attend­ed his guest lec­ture at Sheffield Halam Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year found him to be an enter­tain­ing and sim­i­lar­ly unpre­ten­tious speak­er.

The five minute talk above had the oppo­site effect.

I’d like to pro­pose a reshoot, star­ring Bill Mur­ray. Imag­ine what his par­tic­u­lar com­ic genius could bring to the tran­script above?

Saint Bill has demon­strat­ed that he is will­ing to work below scale when he believes in a project. Per­haps he would accept an exhi­bi­tion t‑shirt in return for liven­ing up this limp artis­tic state­ment.

(Might be what the artist was angling for all along…)

A pho­to post­ed by BALTIC­Cen­tre­For­Con­tem­po­rar­yArt (@balticgateshead) on Nov 21, 2015 at 12:32am PST

A pho­to post­ed by BALTIC­Cen­tre­For­Con­tem­po­rar­yArt (@balticgateshead) on Nov 17, 2015 at 10:20pm PST

A pho­to post­ed by BALTIC­Cen­tre­For­Con­tem­po­rar­yArt (@balticgateshead) on Nov 20, 2015 at 1:25am PST

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Bill Mur­ray Sings the Poet­ry of Bob Dylan: Shel­ter From the Storm

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday