Biography
Niamh Murphy is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist working in the field of expanded drawing and photography. Living and working in the West of Ireland, she is graduating 2021with a BA in Contemporary Art.
Raised in Kinvara, Niamh attributes the freedom of thought in the work and her practice to her childhood years spent outside of the school system. She balances between the digital and analogue, pursuing a distinct aesthetic sensibility that is not limited to a single medium.
Artist Statement
Due to the unexpected exodus from the studio during lockdown, the shrinking of space to work in has impacted the work that I’ve been making in response – both practically and in content.
Influenced by the escapist nature of the fantasy genre, both the process of making and viewing aim to relieve mundanity and inspire imagination. The suspension of scale in the surreal miniature sets unfolds the possibilities for larger realities.
I build miniature sets and photograph them using multiple light colours and sources on a digital camera. I also work with digital simulacra and AI constructed landscapes, exploring the boundary between the ‘real’ and digital landscapes.
The installation, presentation, and formal/sculptural considerations of the photograph in space forms the final but integral part of work. I pose traditional and non-traditional hanging methods together, deconstructing the understanding of these methods and engaging with them as individual formal elements – which in turn, re-informs the process of set creation and photography.
