King Street Gallery on William

Idris Murphy in Conversation with Terence Maloon and Steven Harvey, ANU Drill Hall Gallery

August 3, 2022

Opening Thursday 18th August 6.00 PM all welcome,  Drill Hall Gallery ANU Canberra.

Masks requested at the opening

Idris Murphy will join artist Steven Harvey and Terence Maloon, Director of the ANU Drill Hall Gallery, on Friday August 19 for a floor talk during his upcoming retrospective titled BACKBLOCKS. (Click the link for more information) 

Time: 12:00pm
Location: The ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Kingsley Street, Building #29 Australian National University. There is parking available to gallery visitors.
Open Wednesday – Sunday for the public, from 10am – 5pm. The Gallery is Free Admission. For any enquires please call 02 6125 5832 or email DHG@anu.edu.au

“This survey catches a great Australian painter at the height of his powers. Born in 1949, Idris Murphy developed deep roots in the history of painting as well as a profound feeling for the natural environment. Murphy’s idiom transcends “either/or” — it is indistinguishably landscape painting and painterly abstraction all at once. Arising from a sort of improvisatory incantation, the most vivid metaphors of land, space, light, mood and feeling seem to coalesce spontaneously and unbidden.

This happens even when Murphy’s pictorial means strike us as most improbable and outlandish: recent paintings make abundant use of metallic pigments and wildly abstruse colour combinations. Despite their bizarrerie and casual-looking primitivism, each painting resolves brilliantly into its surface and shape, and exudes a rare poetry of “place”.

Text sourced from the ANU Drill Hall Gallery’s website here.