Murni’s world is one of rampant shagging, unbridled hormones and irrepressible desire. Murni – or I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, to go by her full name – was a Balinese artist who shrugged off all the norms and expectations that life chucked at her and instead made art with total abandon. By the time she died aged 39 in 2006, taken by ovarian cancer, she’d left behind a body of ultra-simple, mega-bold, hyper-colourful painting that functions as a testament to a life lived honestly, independently and very, very hornily.
The earlier works here are stranger and more enigmatic than what comes later. Murni paints hybrid figures, half-plant, half-human, part-animal, part-woman. Branches grow out of bare bums, heads poke out of scale-covered fish bodies, long limbs loop and distend, bodies twist and undulate.
There is endless symbolism here. High heels, mermaids, fish, mirrors, eyes, clocks. It’s heavily surreal, a sort of ultra-feminine comic book take on Giorgio de Chirico.
Everywhere you look there are cocks throbbing and piercing and erupting
She wasn’t working in total isolation. One wall in the opening gallery is dedicated to the small circle of artists she was part of, including Mondo (an Italian who had relocated to Bali), Mokoh and Totol. They also took a simple, bold approach to surreal mythical painting, but with different results. Totol’s monochrome beasties wear military hats in an outwardly political move; Mokoh’s creatures are notably more traditional and Balinese; and Mondo’s approach is way closer to classical portraiture. All different, but with so much shared intention that it’s easy to see why this group was so attracted to each other.
Murni’s later work stands apart though. The paintings are now infinitely more brazen, a total embrace of desire and sexuality. A pig in a bra puts on lipstick. High heels – sexily feminine and absolutely lethal – kick and stomp. Vaginas are worshipped by kneeling figures or penetrated by tentacles; breasts are bound by wristwatches; couples hump and writhe; everywhere you look there are cocks throbbing and piercing and erupting. They pop out of cups, wrap around women’s bodies, nudge at orifices. It’s all desire, totally unbound, totally free.
A total embrace of sexuality … Eye Meets Eye by I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih. Photograph: Courtesy Gajah Gallery & The Estate of I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih
But those wristwatches and clock faces haunt the work, an awareness of impending mortality. Time is short, death is coming. And what better way to spend what little time you have left than bonking?
The exhibition doesn’t do a particularly good job of placing Murni within the wider context of Indonesian art. You don’t come away with any sense of how different – or similar – her work was to the dominant forms of art of her time, or Indonesian art history, which leaves you floundering as a viewer. Context matters, especially when introducing an unfamiliar artist.
But it’s also an intentional move. Murni explicitly rejected her circumstances. She wasn’t interested in the norms of Balinese society, in going to temple, dressing traditionally, being subservient. She lived her life, and she lived it on her terms. And that’s how the work is presented – as the visual output of a singular, independent, defiant woman. This isn’t about Bali or tradition, it’s about sex, dreams, desire and, most of all, it’s about Murni.
