BRETT MURRAY: Limbo

Everard Read Cape Town is delighted to showcase the latest body of work by Brett Murray.

Artist statement:

During hard lockdown at the onset of the pandemic, I set up a studio at home. I needed to keep busy. Although historically most of my works throw metaphorical stones at perceived ills in society, I have only recently worked out that the process of making in itself is therapeutic. I am a slow learner.

While in years past my animal sculptures might symbolically mock predators, policeman, politicians, oligarchs, sycophants, the corrupted and the like, during lockdown I felt impelled to look closer to home for my subject matter. My interests had been shifting from perpetrators to people, and I have been wanting to transition from an accusatory position to one that is more compassionate and empathetic. Something more personal. Not exclusively though; I remain a satirical stone-thrower at heart.

For a while I have been researching small Japanese netsuke kimono fasteners. Mostly of animals, they are deliciously refined and pared-down decorative mini-sculptures carved in stone, wood or ivory (though sometimes cast into metal). In my enquiries I came across the Japanese tradition of placing a to-scale wooden sculpture of a rabbit looking heavenwards outside houses and businesses as a charm to bring prosperity, good luck and fertility.

This seemed like a good place to kick off my lockdown therapy, so I started by making small symbolic portraits of the four of us at home as animals. My partner, myself and our two young boys. Sanell loves rabbits. Lo is wise beyond his years and is represented as an owl. Kai is a mischievous monkey. All three looking to the heavens for guidance or as witnesses to an impending calamity. I hold my hands looking down anxiously as a monkey and father. In hope and in fear.

These first four seemed to resonate effectively, so I extended the series, describing the intimacy and anxiety of isolation and of social separation that has been a universally shared experience and that somehow paradoxically binds humanity together. Hopefully.

The first showing of the original set of ‘Limbo’ bronzes was held at the Everard Read London gallery. An intimate space. We painted the walls a deep red. Womb-like. Unable to install and visit the exhibition myself due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, I had to experience the show long-distance. It is always in the showing – outside of the studio space and foundry context – that what you have made begins to reveal itself and fresh insights are discovered.

What I thought I had produced was a single-issue body of work. A response to lockdown and our shared fears. A fragile tenderness. Our shared breath had been held for a few years.

On seeing the works installed, however, a broader reading seemed possible. Implicit rather than explicit. We are gripped by uncertainties: global warming, nationalism and xenophobia, a failed state, wars and the resulting refugee crisis, the rise of populist right wing agendas across the world...and more. These all now seem to weigh heavily on these works as they gaze heavenwards with both trepidation and in a search for answers. They certainly reflect my current state of mind.

Once the pandemic abated and society started to open up I shifted my focus away from familial intimacies. I have continued reflecting on the personal...but have started throwing stones again.

I can’t help myself.

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Installation & artwork images by Mike Hall