Wendy McMurdo - Indeterminate Objects (Classrooms)

Indeterminate Objects (Classrooms) is a work by award winning Scottish photographer Wendy McMurdo. The project continues her investigation into the relationship between children and computers, and is inspired by young people’s fascination with immersive digital environments such as Minecraft. For this project McMurdo photographed a series of Victorian classroom interiors at a school near her home in Edinburgh. The traditional elements - desks, bookshelves, children’s drawings - are overlaid by a series of hypnotic geometric forms. As these 3D objects hover above the desks, they enter the space of the classroom, casting shadows on the floor which mingle with those of the room. Combining still photography and animation, the project alludes to the co-existence and pervasive nature of these different spaces through which childhood is now experienced.

Wendy McMurdo was born in Edinburgh where she initially trained as a painter. She left the UK in the mid 1980s for the Pratt Institute, New York. While studying there, she turned to photography and on returning to the UK, began to work for the first time with this medium. After completing an MA at Goldsmiths College, London, she was awarded a two-year fellowship by The Henry Moore Foundation. The rapid proliferation of computers in schools provided the context for the development of her next body of work that looked directly at the influence of computers on early years education. McMurdo has exhibited throughout Europe in exhibitions such as The Anagrammatical Body: The Body and its Photographic Condition curated by Christa Steinle and Peter Weibel for ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Uncanny, curated by Urs Stahel for the Fotomuseum Wintherthur and Only Make Believe curated by Marina Warner for Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK. In 2015 she was awarded a PhD by publication by the University of Westminster for her work exploring the relationship of children and photography to the computer.