'I'm aiming to create meaning in the space that exists between the words and
the image, without at the same time specifying meaning...the subject comes
to rest somewhere outside the mere facts of a piece.'
- John Murphy interviewed by Jon Thompson, Aspects, Winter, 1979-80
Lisson Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by John Murphy
previewing 21 February.
John Murphy's practice can be characterised through his use of existing material,
such as reproductions and ready-mades. For this exhibition, his fourth at Lisson
Gallery since 1985, Murphy has created visually austere but conceptually
complex configurations of found images, objects and texts using post cards,
books, film stills, painting and poetry.
Read morePreoccupied with the relationship between vision, things and language whilst
playing on the theme of similarity and difference, John Murphy's art historical
lineage can be traced through a specifically European Symbolist-based conceptual
tradition descending from Mallarmé and Jarry through to Duchamp, Magritte and
Broodthaers. The artist's process of accumulating and arranging fragments of
images and language is echoed in the viewer's experience of the finished
exhibition, where memories of things encountered shape the perception of
other things yet to be seen. The blurring of boundaries between past and
present is emphasized by Murphy's practice of revisiting his own material and re-
presenting previously exhibited works in different configurations potentially
generating new meanings. Neither a purely perceptual or conceptual experience,
the exhibition is conceived as a work of art in its own right, creating a space
where the viewer is constructed as the subject establishing the relationship
between reading and seeing, and where meaning is necessarily unfixable.
John Murphy lives and works in London. One person shows include: “Aquisitions
from the late 90s”, Tate Britain, London 1998; “A Conversation Piece” with Juliâo
Sarmento, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1987-88; Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol 1988; “The Way Up and The Way Down”,
Southampton City Art Gallery and Museum, Southampton; ‘And Things Throw
Light of Things’, Ikon Gallery and Barber Institute, Birmingham, 2004-5.
