Exhibition viewing & talk with Idris Murphy & Maria Stoljar

Enjoy a glass of wine as you view this visually stunning exhibition which is being held in association with the Drill Hall Gallery. Canapes will be served and guests will hear from major exhibiting artist Idris Murphy in conversation with Maria Stoljar.

Idris Murphy: Backblocks

This survey exhibition catches a great Australian painter at the height of his powers. Born in 1952, 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”.

Idris Murphy graduated from National Art School with a diploma in Painting in 1971. In 1982 he became a lecturer at the University of Wollongong, NSW, and was instrumental in establishing the printmaking department of the newly founded School of Creative Arts. Murphy completed a Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong in NSW and a Graduate Diploma (Education), SCAE, Sydney whilst he was a lecturer at the College of Fine Art at UNSW from 1988-2007. He became the National Art School’s Head of Drawing in 1997. His studio is located in Kurnell, Sydney.

Maria Stoljar:

Maria Stoljar is the host and producer of the popular Talking with Painters podcast where she has been bringing conversations with notable Australian artists to listeners around the world for over 6 years. The podcast is full of the personal stories of the painters of Australia – leading, mid-career and emerging – not only as to how they live and work as artists, but how they became an artist in the first place, the highs and lows and what they are working on now.

At the height of the pandemic the podcast was recommended listening by British auction house Christie’s in their ‘Best Art World podcasts’ list and it regularly appears at the top of the Australian Visual Arts Charts through Apple podcasts. It has been a finalist in the Australian Podcast Awards and has been recommended by Art Almanac and featured in Zart Art magazine.

Maria also has a YouTube channel with over 170 videos where you can see those artists in their studios and at their exhibitions.

A fundraising event organised by the S.H. Ervin Gallery Events Committee