An exhibition of recent paintings by American artist Catherine Murphy (b. 1946)–widely celebrated within the US, the occasion will mark the artist’s first dedicated solo presentation outside her country.
Working primarily in painting and drawing, Catherine Murphy has exhibited extensively in the US over the course of her five-decade career, becoming renowned for a distinctive approach that encompasses a rigorous observational process that is centred on the everyday, her imagination and dreams, paired with an understanding of reality as a condition of constant flux and transition. Of this she has stated: ‘I dream of, as well as construct, an image that I want to do. the story has always been central to my wanting to make a painting. Even when it was more invisible, more a part of the mundane, it was important to me.²
Made over prolonged periods of sustained observation, her work focusses on day-to-day subject matter, habitually overlooked and commonplace elements drawn from her immediate surroundings and imagination–ranging from still lifes, self-portraiture, domestic settings and the outdoors. Rarely returning to the same subject or scene twice, Murphy composes her imagery deliberately, courting a contained fission between the canvas surface and its potential for imagistic illusion. Her scenographies reflect a precise study of painting and of the nature of representation itself, revealing unexpected or covert incongruities within reality and its narrative potential.
| Duration | 18 January 2023 - 25 February 2023 |
| Times | Tues - Sat 11am - 6pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Sadie Coles HQ (Bury Street) |
| Address | 8 Bury Street, London, SW1Y 6AB |
| Contact | 442074938611 / info@sadiecoles.com / www.sadiecoles.com/ |