Briony Marshall’s Sculptures Connect People With Science

With a background in biochemistry, Briony Marshall knows all about molecules. But instead of pursuing a lab career, she connects people with scientific topics through sculptures. “I’m a bigger picture person,” Marshall says. “Having looked at what it’s like to work in a lab, I didn’t want to work on a tiny bit of the jigsaw puzzle.”

Marshall didn’t immediately start art school after her biochemistry degree, but instead spent a few years working, until an evening sculpture class changed her mind. “I just was so in love with it,” she says. Until then, she had been doing painting, drawing and photography, but sculpture brought an extra dimension — literally. “It made me so happy to do stuff in three dimensions that within six months, I quit my job.”

Now a full-time sculptor, Marshall’s work is still heavily influenced by science. She spoke about her career and the way that she connects with science through art at a recent pub talk organized by PubSci in London, where this interview took place.

Several of Marshall’s pieces are directly inspired by biology or chemistry. For example, the different stages of embryonic development, called Carnegie stages, inspired a series of sculptures of the same name. Each sculpture is a very large representation of one of the early development stages during which a fertilized egg gradually changes and grows to form different body parts and organs. Marshall’s large sculptures for some of the Carnegie stages may look abstract, but they accurately show the biology of development.

Humans as atoms

In several other pieces, Marshall zooms in even further, down to the molecular level, by representing individual atoms as human forms. To understand how she did that, here’s a quick introduction to chemistry: Within a molecule, a carbon atom can form four bonds with other atoms. For example, in methane (CH4) carbon is bound to four different hydrogen atoms with one bond each, while in carbon dioxide (CO2) it forms double bonds with two oxygen atoms, still using up all four allowed bonds. The number of bonds is different for other atoms. Hydrogen only forms one bond, oxygen two.

In Marshall’s sculptures, these bonds are shown as connections between human shapes who are holding each other by their limbs. The four carbon bonds become the arms and legs of one figure in the sculpture.

Marshall created a code where each atom or atom pair became its own human shape. She combined several of these shapes into larger sculptures, including one that represents part of a DNA molecule .

The people in the audience at Marshall’s Pub Sci presentation had come to the talk from different backgrounds. Some members of the audience had a background in molecular sciences themselves and after hearing about her method for translating atomic bonds into human limbs to make the DNA sculpture, one of the scientists in the audience asked “what about phosphorus?”.

Atoms that form four or fewer bonds with their neighbors can be easily represented as human shapes connected via limbs. But DNA also contains phosphorus atoms, and those form five bonds, while humans only have four limbs. To solve this problem, Marshall found a creative solution by giving all the figures in her sculpture that represent phosphorus a long ponytail to form the necessary fifth connection point.

Marshall’s DNA sculpture even got a visit from James Watson, one of the discoverers of the helical structure of DNA. “He was quizzing me on exactly whose measurements I was using,” reveals Marshall. The exact distances between the atoms in DNA have been determined in different ways over the years, and Marshall had used one of these calculations to make sure that each figure in the sculpture was in the right place. Watson appreciated both the art and the scientific accuracy in the work.

Collaborating with communities and the environment

Marshall also addresses larger scientific topics with her work, such as the influence of human actions on the planet. As a way to reflect Earth’s gradual changes, she started using rammed earth, a technique used for many centuries to create structures out of packed layers of earth. It’s similar to one of the methods used to build the Great Wall of China, for example.

Marshall’s series of rammed earth sculptures also offered an opportunity to create public art and engage passers-by in the process. At Hengistbury Head on the South coast of England, she created “Layers of Bournemouth”, a rammed earth sculpture that reflects the layers of the local seaside cliffs. Over the course of nine days in 2018, dozens of volunteers helped to shape the sculpture while other visitors started conversations to learn about the artwork and geology.

More recently, Marshall created another rammed earth sculpture, in the town center of West Norwood, in South London. This sculpture, “Plastic Mountain”, was also made together with volunteers and other visitors who walked past the work-in-progress on the street. To highlight that human-made materials don’t easily degrade, Marshall asked visitors to bring plastic waste they found in the local area, such as bottles or plastic bags. These were attached to the central metal frame of the sculpture and buried within the rammed earth sculpture.

Working on “Plastic Mountain” also gave her an opportunity to talk about science with people who were just passing by on the street. “The enthusiasm has been amazing,” she says. “I think a lot of people can be put off science at school for various reasons. But if you explain it in a straightforward way with simple examples, everybody can understand it,” she adds. “It’s not that complicated.”

While Marshall enjoyed talking about the science behind “Plastic Mountain”, not everyone stopped to chat. Some people in the area complained about having a sculpture made of garbage in their town center and the Daily Mail covered the divided opinions that sparked on local online forums. But this sculpture was never meant to last forever.

Over the next few weeks, the layers of “Plastic Mountain” gradually eroded. Marshall had fortified the bottom few layers in a similar way as the longer-lived “Layers of Bournemouth”, but the rest of Plastic Mountain was left to the elements. As the earth washed off the central frame, the plastic remained behind. Now, all that’s left of the sculpture is the base, the metal frame and a lot of plastic waste.

The remnants of Plastic Mountain are still on display in West Norwood, but have been moved to the premises of a local retailer. Layers of Bournemouth is at Hengistbury Head near Bournemouth. See Briony Marshall’s website for information on her other artworks. For more about PubSci events, see their website.

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