Ruth Murray – Good Morning Midnight
Preview Friday April 12th, 7pm
Artist Talk Saturday 13th April, 3pm
Exhibitions continues until Saturday May 11th
Gallery open Tues -Sat, 12 – 8pm
To view this information in Welsh click here.
Good morning, Midnight!
I’m coming home,
Day got tired of me –
How could I of him?
Sunshine was a sweet place,
I liked to stay –
But Morn didn’t want me – now –
So good night, Day!
The title of this exhibition is a quote from an Emily Dickinson poem and is inspired by the Jean Rhys novel of the same name. The novel is about a middle-aged English woman returning to Paris after a long absence. She drinks, obsesses over her appearance, and drifts through the city she loves feeling lonely, vulnerable and depressed.
‘My paintings are about the experiences of women – most of my paintings are of women in a scene. It’s the hidden thoughts and the psychology of the situation that interests me most. I use pattern and light to transform the ordinary, tangible objects into pliable masses and squiggles. Sometimes these dynamic patterns and shapes take centre stage, leaving a stationary, solitary protagonist seeming distant, bored, trapped or lost. I am excited by light and colour, which paint serves best, and love how the playfulness of this can, paradoxically, add a sort of melancholy to the thing it’s depicting. Sometimes I’ll confront the viewer with enigmatic behaviours (there’s always something private and inaccessible about the subjects); and at other times I’ll use rituals, symbols and tokens to disrupt the reading of the image. It’s not a radical effect: more a gentle skewing. Sometimes it’s the slightest gesture that feels most significant’.
Ruth Murray (b.1984, Birmingham, UK) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008, where she was awarded the Stanley Smith Scholarship to study and the Sheldon Bergh Award for her final show. In her graduation year she also won the De Laszlo Prize for Portraiture and the Boundary Gallery Figurative Art Prize. Following this she was Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome and artist-in-residence at Glogauair (Berlin), Pro Artibus (Finland), Kaus Australis (Rotterdam) and USF (Bergen). That year she had a solo exhibition ‘Keruffle’ at the North Wall Art Gallery, Oxford, was selected for the Threadneedle Figurative Art Prize, and was awarded the Surgeon’s Prize whilst exhibiting at the RBA Annual exhibition. Other notable exhibitions include Peoples prize winner at Beep Painting Prize 2014, Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi’s 4 New Sensations, The Creative Cities Collection, Beep Painting Prize 2018 and the BP Portrait Award.