Brett MURRAY (b. 1961)

BIOGRAPHY

Brett Murray studied at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1988 with distinction.

Murray staked out his artistic turf early in his career and has doggedly cultivated it ever since. His impatience with political correctness, and disgust with the constraints imposed by artistic gatekeepers, has scarcely been disguised. This was demonstrated by The Spear in 2012, which became the most vilified work of art ever produced in South Africa. Murray was branded provocative, subversive, sardonic, bitter and angry.

He has exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad. From 1991 to 1994, he established the sculpture department at the University of Stellenbosch, where he curated the show Thirty Sculptors from the Western Cape in 1992. In 1995, he curated, with Kevin Brand, Scurvy at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. That year he co-curated Junge Kunst Aus Zud Afrika for the Hänel Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1999, Murray co-founded (with artists and cultural practitioners Lisa Brice, Kevin Brand, Bruce Gordon, Andrew Putter, Sue Williamson, Robert Weinek and Lizza Littlewort) Public Eye, a Section 27 company that managed and initiated art projects in the public arena with the aims to develop a greater profile for public art in Cape Town. They initiated projects on Robben Island, worked with city health officials on aids awareness campaigns and initiated outdoor sculpture projects including the Spier Sculpture Biennale. He curated Homeport in 2001, which saw 15 artists create site-specific text-based works in Cape Town’s waterfront precinct.

Murray was included on the Cuban Biennial of 1994, and subsequently his works where exhibited at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Germany. He was included on the group show Springtime in Chile at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago. He was also part of the travelling show Liberated Voices, Contemporary Art From South Africa, which opened at the Museum for African Art in New York in 1998. His work formed part of the shows Min(d)fields at the Kunsthaus in Baselland, Switzerland in 2004 and The Geopolitics of Animation at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville in Spain in 2007. He won the Cape Town Urban Art competition in 1998 that resulted in the public work Africa, a 3.5-metre bronze sculpture, being erected in Cape Town’s city centre.

He was nominated as the Standard Bank Young Artist of the year in 2002.

He won, with Stefaans Samcuia, the commission to produce an 8 x 30-metre wall sculpture for the foyer of the Cape Town International Convention Centre in 2003. In 2007, he completed Specimens, a large wall sculpture for the University Of Cape Town’s medical school campus. In 2011, he produced the public artwork Seeds for The University of Bloemfontein and, in 2013, he was commissioned to produce the 7-metre bronze Citizen for the Auto & General Park in Johannesburg.

His video installation Triumph was included on the South African Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

Recent solo shows include Brood at the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg (2024) and Limbo at the Everard Read Galleries in London (2021) and Cape Town (2022).

Murray’s work is housed in numerous South African and international public and private collections.

SOURCE
‘Biography,’ Brett Murray, http://www.brettmurray.co.za.
‘Brett Murray,’ Gallery Bon Bon, https://www.gallerybonbon.com/products/brett-murray?srsltid=AfmBOorukmIyvE_hD-ZCRq8__z5-y7UTYdOshQ2Cuu_kFzt7PV_h9diw.