“The idea of of something sinister going on but never really
fully explained,” is what urban artist Benjamin Murphy describes of
his electrical tape works. He prefers to let the viewer decide for
themselves when deconstructing the monochrome line drawings. “I
don't do any colour at all, it is much more striking for me. black
and white is automatically a little bit more uncomfortable to look
at.” Compounded as the forms are often of seemingly vulnerable
people, “I like to keep my work on the thin line between beauty and
fragility,” with eyeless characters inducing feelings of empathy
and pity.
Born in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, Murphy has a BA in Graphic
Design from Salford University and an MA in Fine Art and although
he hates telling this story, working with electrical tape was born
of a drunken episode which resulted in a friends wall being covered
by the adhesive material. The next day “I was sneaking around
disused parts of the university, messing around and ever since it
has spiralled out of control,” all-consuming, as he tells us he can
at times be so absorbed, that he spends “12 or more hours straight
on piece.”
A lot of his work deals with the human condition, and is not
constrained to the gallery or a framed piece, with his work seen on
the street, where life is most energetic. “I Love doing stuff on
the street, when someone enters a gallery to view an artwork, they
already have some preconceptions and ideas about what an artwork
should be. When something is encountered on the street, they don't
have any of these kind of intrinsic rules about what art should be.
It gives me a lot more freedom.”
Continually experimenting and challenging himself, Murphy is
always thinking about what the next level is, which we see in a
piece where railings are used to create words when viewed at a
specific angle, “a new piece, something I've been wanting to do for
a while.” He has also collaborated with other artists,
helping his friend, David Shillinglaw paint the walls on the front
of Village Underground, which is where we meet for the interview at
an event for Anti-Slavery International. Murphy has donated a
piece, entitled The Invisible Woman which almost has a 3D effect,
as it is drawn onto three sheets of perspex, on both sides.
“Technically a six layered artwork,”and the piece “is still
referencing sex slavery slightly,” but more an implied connection
than explicit one.
Speaking of some of his street artwork we see in Shoreditch,
he has “done a lot in this area and want to move out.” As a tribute
to Follow Your Art: Street Art Against Slavery, he did a “nine
storey high tape drawing” of a man in shackles on a window of the
NCP car park on Great Eastern Street, it could be that greater
challenges are merely now sought. The long winter has also not
helped, “with all this cold weather, the tape glue I use
solidifies. I am itching to get out in the street. Want to do some
more collaborations with people and also exhibit a bit more outside
of England.”
Works such as housewife with her head in the oven; a recurring
theme of losing innocence; skeletal drawings of animals and comment
on sexuality, offer another element to his work and its comment,
unfurled from tape, on the world. There is a preference to sketch
from life, however, “my tape drawings take so long, I never do them
with a model, working a lot from photographs, but never drawing
true to them.” It is a true obsession, “I have no other hobbies,
artwork is my entire life, its like an addiction.”
Interview and Portraits
Nardip Singh
Images provided by artist
Copyright © Benjamin Murphy
www.benjaminmurphy.info
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