Idris Murphy

7 He also introduces the industrial mineral sheen of metallic paints. The tension between a work being pictorially resolved and tightly replete or more vulnerable and uncertain is sustained in many of these paintings. Unlike the works where the landscape holds all, here are images that reveal the battle of process and the ‘talk’ inside their making. They are allowed to tremble. On the studio wall there are shards of ripped paper and canvas. Moving from one frame to another Murphy cuts into the square with these fragments or takes a panel and simply inverts it. Some of the paintings consist of parts and they are moving parts. “The movement of four panels, creates a fifth entity” he explains simply “and that entity is the unknown force outside the discipline of the square and the quadrant. It is the unstable element that energises and questions the whole.” Compositionally, these are restless inventions. This finds full flower in a work like “Momentary Reflections” (Acrylic on aluminium and collage, 2017). Inside the magnetic diagonal pull of the painting it seems that landforms, time and light are compounding. As if a seismic volcanic energy was brewing beneath flat paint. If Idris Murphy’s first project was to eliminate the limits of a “view” and to shatter the soothing decorative impulse, his second movement expands the polemic into harder reaches. Here is a skeleton tree reduced to a bleached harrowed line. Here is a strange shade of green not native to a dry interior. Or, a tense pink sky bursting with rain that won’t fall. Revelation and mute ambivalence are sharing the same habitat. Very beautiful things push into the terrain of very plain things. And it contributes to a whole that has been building over decades. Brewing. Breaking down. Re-growing like a stubborn plant. These are landscapes that refute belief yet invite return. If faith has the power to silence doubt, even for a few moments, then painting still stands as a portal. Earth is assailed but obdurate. It is a still a place where the lovers rise up and the mountains touch the ground. Anna Johnson, October, 2017 Advancing trees with two clouds 2017 acrylic & collage on board 45 x 50 cm