Geline WC
19 of July - 29 of August
Ashley Saville presents Geline WC: a site-specific installation by Sienna Murdoch. Taking over the gallery’s spare toilet cubicle, Murdoch creates an
immersive chamber clad entirely in geline, her signature jelly-like biomaterial. Developed by the artist in 2022 while working as a prop designer for film productions, geline was conceived for making science-fiction food props. Since then, it has become the foundation of an independent material practice
spanning ephemeral sculpture, interactive happenings and workshops. This installation presents Murdoch’s new ideological approach to geline, explored in relation to architecture and the body.
The installation is constructed from 200 kilograms of recycled geline, melted down, dyed and moulded into panels of a monochrome oxblood hue. These panels are layered over the walls, ceiling and plumbing fixtures of the toilet cubicle, covering all visible surfaces in textured relief. The dark red colour of the panels — at once opulent and hepatic- derives its depth from iron oxide and caput mortuum pigments applied to the geline in layers. Colour traces inherited from the material’s previous uses provide further richness and tone.
Geline’s translucency produces subsurface scattering —an optical effect also observed in milk, wax and human skin. As light penetrates these materials, it scatters internally in random directions before re-emerging elsewhere on the surface. The material’s colour is absorbed into the emitted light, creating a soft inner glow. The effect encourages what film theorist Laura U. Marks calls ‘haptic visuality’: a mode of perception in which the eyes ‘graze’ a surface much as fingers would. In the context of the public toilet cubicle—a scatological space where surface contact is discouraged — touch instincts must be withheld. ‘Here it becomes something closer to an organ that you have been invited to stand inside,’ says the artist.
Murdoch frames her installation in the vernacular of an interiors showroom, evoking an absurdist double entendre that alludes to both aspirational domestic life and the body's most intimate secrets. With deadpan precision, Geline WC is a meditation on fantasy and permanence, desire and disgust. Sienna Murdoch is a London-based artist. She has collaborated widely with fashion designers and cultural institutions including Hermès, Stella McCartney, the Serpentine Galleries and Frieze. Her work has been featured in The Observer, A Rabbit’s Foot, Twin Magazine and World of Interiors
