When I meet Sienna Murdoch in mid-October at her house in East London, her kitchen table is covered in an assortment of orange and yellow gourds. “Their wonderful bulges inspire my model making,” she notes, brewing a pot of bright yellow herbal tea. 

Murdoch is an artist and prop designer who specialises in the weird and wonderful. On the day I visit, her sitting room is filled with displays of objects she has made, from a pile of  black tubular forms (which to my eyes look a little like sausages) and cake-like totems in shades of pink (“leftovers” from a recent commission at The Chancery Rosewood Hotel in London) to a table of candy-like curiosities in green, cream and yellow. 

They are all made of Geline, Murdoch’s signature biomaterial derived from seaweed. Initially developed for film where it can mimic jelly without melting under the studio lights, it later became central to her sculptural practice, which she presented at a Frieze Cork Street show earlier this year. After I ask for permission to touch them, the artist, who is dressed in black and has a quietly dark sense of humour, seems to read my mind when I also secretly wonder what they would taste like. “Quite sweet and like soap,” she exacts. 

Murdoch’s journey with Geline began in 2021. Having worked as an assistant to a production designer and a sculptor, before turning to food styling, she got an unexpected call from Marvel Studios during the depths of lockdown. “They wanted big kinetic alien banquet jellies that wobbled,” she recalls. 

After almost turning down the request, Murdoch succumbed to the joys of Geline, she now uses it daily, replacing her use of silicone and resin. Within the Marvel universe, she has worked on Fantastic Four and Loki, making “thousands of slices of pie,” for the latter series. “They initially requested a selection of mid-century desserts to display in the automat,” she recalls. “Sundaes, baked Alaska, lemon meringue, cheesecake, banoffee pies.” Eventually they opted for multiples of a classic key lime pie. “There’s a moment in the trailer where Owen Wilson admits this is a really good pie,” says Murdoch.  

In film and television, Geline has been thirsty work for Murdoch, who, as well as Marvel titles, has worked on productions such as Netflix’s Bridgerton and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2. “You’d be surprised at how many people want jelly in films,” says Murdoch, who explains that it  can be melted down and reused for the next project. “You can make repetitions perfectly for continuity, control the colours precisely to compliment the set. It moves, the way the light refracts. It’s joyous and funny. Then, with identical edible versions, actors can easily chuck it back between lines.”

One of Murdoch’s latest film commissions has been outside of her geline work, but it has nonetheless had a slightly slimy, fantastical quality. For Ronan Day-Lewis’s Anemone—in which the director’s father, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Ray Stoker, a hermit in the woods of Northern England, the prop designer was asked to create a rabbit stew that the lead character hunts with a bow and arrow. 

 “It was quite a pivot,” says Murdoch. “But I embraced the opportunity to cook for an actor whose commitment to his craft I often reflect on.” In concocting the rabbit’s stew, Murdoch took her part extremely seriously, taking into consideration Day Lewis’s famous method acting. “I suspected he’d fast between shots, so that when he ate, it was a genuine response to hot food,” says Murdoch, who describes overcoming a national shortage of wild rabbit and being inspired by a detail of Ray’s herb garden in the script. “I decided to make it look like an authentic stew made by a hermit in a shed, but taste like the most intensely delicious thing I had the capacity to make,  in a tiny green room in the studio of North Wales.” 

The night before filming, Murdoch didn’t sleep. “The call sheet was Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Bean and rabbit stew,” she remembers. “After the first few takes, I had feedback over the radio that Ray [Daniel Day Lewis] thought this was the best stew he’d had in days and days.”

A cinephile, Murdoch describes her dream film project as Yorgos Lanthimos. “Geline thrives in spaces where you can’t quite trust what you are seeing,” she says. Murdoch runs a film club called ‘Seduce’  (“Films that deal with an actual seduction or use seductive aesthetics”) and describes stints in the BFI Rubens library, “From slasher movies to Claire Denis.” 

Beyond cinema, Murdoch uses Geline in workshops that experiment with the material’s strange properties and celebrate the use of touch. She has created props for music videos (the box of sweets in PinkPantheress’s music video for viral hit ‘Illegal’) as well as commissions for brands and events “I made a fantasy cake for a friend’s wedding that was inedible. I still found bitemarks the next day.” Her strangest commission, she notes, has been a pair of breasts for her clown friend Paulina. “She lends them to someone in the audience, who then becomes her mother and breastfeeds her, they needed to be durable.”

Murdoch’s sculptural practice with Geline explores darker, more personal territory than her film work suggests. “I use it to explore the uncanny, memories and desire.”  she says. “I’m drawn to ambiguity and the grotesque, the gap between seeing and touching. your eye is activated, but you can’t know them until you’ve verified through contact.” describing the slippage in her personal creations, between something familiar and unfamiliar. “It’s important to have something you recognise amongst the abstract, that enables you to go in and explore, whether it’s a bed or a piece of toast. I’m reclaiming manipulation, and seeing what happens when it’s playful.”

Photographed on film by Fatima Khan at home in East London with Sienna Murdoch in October 2025, with styling and creative direction by Broad Peak Studio. The shoot was styled by Kitty Spicer. Shoot intern Dunia Daham. Look One features a full outfit by Miu Miu, Fall/Winter 2025. Look Two combines a shirt by Reparto, Spring/Summer 2025, with a skirt and jacket by Eman Dickens, a dress styled from the stylist’s own collection, and socks by Miu Miu, Fall/Winter 2025. Look Three includes a coat and shoes by Chanel, Fall/Winter 2025–26 Pre-Collection, paired with socks by Ablondi, Autumn/Winter 2025. Special thanks to Chanel, Miu Miu, and Lobby PR.