The Autumn Auction 2020

Still Life with Polke Vase plays on the traditional genre of Still Life Paintings, whilst referencing Sigmar Polke, one of the 20th Century’s most challenging painters. The red/yellow and blue tones jostle for position in a background that is at once painterly and fluid yet somehow flat and still. 

The curvaceous cartoon vessel is adorned with a pattern resonant of Polke’s ‘raster’ drawings, and the three slender, spider-like tendrils protruding relate to themes of life and it’s ephemerality within Still Life painting.

Callum Murphy’s explorative paintings straddle the figurative and abstract, intertwining gestural drawing with carefully rendered patterns and blurring the distinction between foreground and background through painterly illusion. Murphy’s paintings offer glimpses of recognition, interpreting borrowed elements from the historical art canon and often playing on traditional genres of painting, whilst remaining deliberately ambiguous. Through this Murphy aims to analyse the mechanics of painting, challenging and extending the possibilities of the medium.

Accolades

Education: BA Hons Fine Art Practice, UWE, Bristol 2014

Selected Exhibitions: Concrete Blue, Group, Unit 3 Projects, London. 2020. TRIO SHOW: Callum Murphy X Alex Jones X Naomi Nakazato, Group, Galerie. Tracanelli, Grenoble. 2020. Drab Harlequins, Solo, Unit 3 Projects, London. 2019. (Ex)Pugelar, Solo, Loft 6D, Bristol, 2017. Black and White, Group, East Bristol Contemporary, Bristol, 2016.