Gavin Murphy Moving Deaths
At The LAB, Foley Street, Dublin 1
 6th November 2008 from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at the LAB
 For his exhibition Moving Deaths, Gavin Murphy invokes a web spun from various sources - Ludwig Boltzmann’s theories relating to entropy and probability; the doodles of pioneering film distributor W.W. Hodkinson; man (and art’s) relationship with nature; texts by or found in, Delmore Schwartz, Milan Kundera, Nietzsche, and Montaigne; and the plastic possibilities of cinematic structures and mise en scène. As a dialogue between generations of thought and representation, the work is formed upon meandering connections, yet is as much about the removal of the links between things. Carefully setting up a series of playful oppositions, Murphy’s aesthetic methodology relies on prior knowledge, yet eschews any attempt toward the didactic. In turn, his work celebrates the inevitable uncertainty that is, in a post-enlightenment world, the reward of investigation. The result betrays a compulsive need to create structure and order, while at the same time giving in to the notion that these very actions are futile.
 
The works in Moving Deaths are related through an essayistic form of sculptural assemblage, made of sourced and carefully found materials, video, text and various forms of photography. Often transforming ubiquitous, discarded, recycled or un-recyclable components, Murphy orders these to present poetic and confounding sculptural work made up from non-traditional sculptural materials. For this his second solo exhibition he has extended these to include unique fabricated elements, as well as a return to co-authorship in a work made with former collaborator Sinead Gray (née Burt-O’Dea).
 
Murphy’s practice draws from an intertextual palette, combining the fictive and the factual, literature and philosophical thought, in order to pose concerns regarding time, existence, the history of ideas, and the future of said history. The piece Monument to W.W. Hodkinson for example portrays a universally recognised, yet fictional landscape - the Paramount Studios logo. This, Murphy explains, was originally sketched out on a dinner napkin complete with a ring of stars by the studios’ founder. Hodkinson, who based the image on the memory of a mountain from his Utah home, was later fired from Paramount and slipped into obscurity, yet the model of film distribution that he introduced became the standard that has existed with few changes for almost a century. Now, the logotype and stars have been painstakingly erased to reveal the original memory - a monument to its creator, and to the permanence of the image and system he created.
 
Gavin Murphy completed his Diploma in Art in 1996, Degree in Interactive Media in 2002, and MA in Visual Arts Practice in 2007, all with IADT, Dun Laoghaire. He has exhibited with Green on Red Gallery, in the 3-person show Frontier, 2008; Dublin Gallery Four, in 2006; and with UK gallery Colony, in their Birmingham space and at Zoo Art Fair, London, both 2007.  He is the recipient of various awards including an Arts Council Bursary Award (2008), and a residency at Fire Station Artists’ Studios (from June 2009). He is editor of the publication House Projects, 2008. Forthcoming exhibitions include Tulca, Galway; Conical, Melbourne; and ICAN, Sydney. 
 Exhibition continues to 6th December
 Opening hours 10am to 6pm Monday to Saturday
www.dublincity.ie