BENJAMIN MURPHY: GILDED CHAOS
BENJAMIN MURPHY, Heretic, 2015
BEERS London is proud to present Gilded Chaos, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the London-based Benjamin Murphy. Murphy will spend two weeks prior to the exhibition, transforming the entire gallery space with his trademark aesthetic and techniques to create a totally immersive sensory experience. Murphy has created his most labour intensive and detailed body of work especially for BEERS gallery. This includes a gallery-wide installation and two-dimensional, ‘drawings’ that push the boundaries of both scale and subject matter.
Murphy is known primarily for his graphic, time-consuming installations created entirely out of black electrical tape, resulting in a stark recognisable aesthetic. This is borrowed from German expressionism, which in turn creates a subject matter that takes inspiration from Romantic literature and the history of the vanitas in art.
The artist lives in London, where he tirelessly works both in and out of studio to plan and execute elaborate tape-based drawings. Murphy’s images work on many plains of perspective and contain various contradictory elements that contain an on-going narrative or macabre. A decadent story-arc is hinted throughout, with the work referencing a range of sources mainly from poetry and classic literature, specifically creating a mystical aura around the work and allowing the spectator to create their own meaning surrounding the work.
BENJAMIN MURPHY
BENJAMIN MURPHY (b. 1988, Yorkshire, UK) has a Master of Arts Degree in Fine Art from the University of Salford. After university, Murphy moved to London and has exhibited his electrical tape works in a number of solo presentations including: Deaths and Entrances (Ravenna: May 2015), Lunacy, Law, and Conscience (Moniker Art Fair: Oct 2014), Seven Years Of Sketchbooks – (Hoxton Gallery – Apr 2014), Nothing Is More Real Than Nothing (Pescara, Italy: Jan 2014), and Abandon All Hope (Hoxton Gallery – Nov 2012). In addition, Murphy has participated in a number of group exhibitions including in 2014 Houses of Parliament alongside Picasso, the Saatchi Gallery in 50×50 exhibition, as well as Whitfield Fine Art alongside Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George, Marc Quinn, and Cecily Brown. Murphy’s interest in contemporary art theory has led him to write for multiple magazines including: This Is Tomorrow, Rooms Magazine, and Artefuse. He regularly collaborates with charities, curating shows and donating art works. Past collaborators include: Anti-Slavery International, The Hepatitis C Trust, Amnesty International, International Alert, Reprieve, The Born Free Foundation, Each One Teach One, Save The Tigers, Uthink, Apopo, and The Teenage Cancer Trust. Murphy’s first solo exhibition with BEERS will open in early January 2016.
