The recently announced Merrion Plinth Contemporary Art Award goes to Dublin-based artist and curator Gavin Murphy. Established in 2019, the biennial award aims to champion artists and provide a platform for contemporary art practice. From a hundred and ten submissions, four artists were shortlisted, the others being Ursula Burke, Damien Flood and Eilis O’Connell.
Artists in Ireland and the UK were invited to submit work that was ‘considered, ambitious and clear in its intention’. This year’s judging panel was Lochlann Quinn, chairman of the Merrion Hotel, Oonagh Young, graphic designer and gallerist, and Patrick Murphy, former director of the Royal Hibernian Academy.
Murphy’s winning work, Porte fenêtre (Bright Yellow, Olive Green, Brown, Grey, Off-White) is part of his ongoing series exploring the social and technological history of glass. ‘It was originally made for the exhibition “Remaking the Crust of the Earth” at the Irish Architectural Archive,’ the artist explains, ‘and it stemmed from an engagement with the archive and the work of Irish Australian architect Raymond McGrath [1903–1977]. The title refers to a traditional, tall, glass-paned door – and is symbolically linked to the idea of separation from and contemplation of the exterior world.’
Another notable influence was Paul Scheerbart’s classic 1914 publication Glass Architecture, which imagined glass as a transformative social and cultural force through light and colour.
Murphy’s work was created through collage and assemblage, then photographed in collaboration with artist and photographer Louis Haugh, with the blocks of colour behind patterned glass. Referencing the collage techniques of Cubist pioneers Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso to render spatial and temporal dimensions on a flat surface, Porte fenêtre proposes a more nuanced response to the complex materiality and potential of glass.
Murphy is a graduate of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), Dún Laoghaire. The artist received €5,000 and his winning work will be displayed in a dedicated space in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin for two years, alongside the hotel’s extensive collection of 19th- and 20th-century Irish and European art.
Stephanie McBride
