Jan Murray

Figurine (blue)

2023
oil on linen
18 x 107cm
Courtesy of the artist

Artist bio

Jan Murray is a Melbourne based artist working across painting, sculpture and installation. She completed her graduate studies at VCA and RMIT. Since 1982 she has shown regularly in both solo and group exhibitions in public museums, commercial galleries and artist run initiatives. Her work has been included in national and international surveys of contemporary art in Australia, Germany, France, Italy and the USA and is widely represented in significant national and international public collections - including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. She has been awarded several Australia Council grants and residencies, including Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Via Farini, Milan and the British School at Rome. 

Artist statement

'Figurine (blue) continues to utilise the 'puffer' jacket as a central motif in my practice.  However, in this painting jackets are combined to loosely resemble a full-scale figure and further explore the ubiquity of the 'puffer' as a garment of comfort and protection worn throughout the world across all cultures and genders. This painting seeks to simultaneously render 'strange yet familiar' the figurative form that results from the manipulation of these everyday garments. Seemingly suspended within the canvas against a saturated colour, the back-to-front, larger than life image gestures to the viewer while playing with the ambiguities of embodiment and representation through the paradoxes of visual perception.'

Jan Murray with her artwork 'Figurine (blue)' 2023. Photo: Elijah Clarke.

This artwork will be on display in the 2023 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize Finalist Exhibition from Saturday 25 November 2023 until Sunday 18 February 2024.

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