Jan Murray, ‘Objets de Désir’February 2 - March 3 2012, Exhibition opening event Saturday February 4th, 2-5pm
Jan Murray
Shopping Bag #12 2011, oil on linen, 61 x 40 cm |
Since 1990 Jan Murray's practice has focused on certain relationships between painting and its internal and external architecture. Using various means, she has presented the painting itself as subject or motif in seeking to interrogate the relationship between the painting and its primary support - the wall - and the architectural space in which it is placed. She has expanded the investigation of these relationships through the introduction of three-dimensional representation – the creation and installation of plaster simulacra of paintings. This sculptural dimension in turn offered the opportunity for play with altered realities and the dialogue between object and space. She has further tested the literal and metaphorical limits of painting as object and illusionistic vehicle by tearing open the canvas.
In the catalogue essay accompanying Murray’s ‘just looking’ exhibition at the Charles Nodrum Gallery in 2009, Chantal Faust noted: ‘The canvas-cum-bag carries the symbol of that final crescendo of desire: the space between consummation and release.’ ‘Objets de Désir’, in deliberately conflating the shopping bag with the canvas, seeks to further examine the paradoxes of perception and representation inherent in both painting and looking. [Jan Murray CV] |