Black Vertical & Red Horizontal, Red Line at Fifteen Hundred: Ro Murray at Factory 49

RO MURRAY

Factory 49 Sydney

49 Shepherd St Marrickville Sydney 2204

Thurs - Sat, 1-6 pm (+61) 2 9572 9863 f49committee@gmail.com factory49 blogspot.com Factory 49 Paris

10 bis rue de Chaligny 75012 Paris

6 November (opening 6-8pm) to 16 November 2019

The pairing of Factory 49’s two exhibition spaces enables artist Ro Murray to speak expansively from a reductive visual vocabulary made up of dualities and the spaces between them. Returning to a signature colour palette of black and red on white, with rectilinearity reduced to horizontal and vertical placements, the distinct processes of printmaking and weaving interact unexpectedly as an anchor of human scale in sitespecific installations. The creation of these transient interior spaces operates as a platform for an ephemeral architecture of protest. The spare language of dichotomy, presented in confined spaces suggests an urgent narrative, of stark choices ahead.

Crosshairs is the title of an ongoing lino print series, and the powerful colour and calligraphic constructions in the Main Showroom introduce the show and conceptually, the notion of targets (one thinks of climate action targets of current political debate).

This series, Black Vertical and Red Horizontal suggests the vigour and irresolute nature of that debate as compositions veer between simple interactions of one or two elements to complex hashtag nests of multiple layers and pictorial strategies. Murray stresses the presence and place for imperfection in the work and pictorially, these point to the imperfection of the humanity, and the role of learning and mistakes.

Another influence on Murray’s practice is Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers. Albers wove from a unique position, presenting historically marginalised womens’ handcrafted and textile

traditions as equally modernist idioms.1 Upscaling the woven grid to bodily scale via a PVC installation situates weaving in a contemporaneity in which humans engage with the large scale environmental outcomes of industrialised modernity. Red line at fifteen hundred in the smaller Project Space is described by Murray as both a direction for art installation and a reference alluding to danger ahead. Its context here conflates the gallery hanging eyeline with the weft (usually horizontal and secondary element when setting up a weaving), again inviting a consideration of human scale and an altered viewing perspective, addressed within the compressed space of a small room.

These resolutely linear interventions play upon the grid, human scale, perspective and architectural space as a way of confronting and reflecting upon the place and role of humans in shaping the future of the world. Perhaps, and as Lynne Cooke describes of Anni Albers this means, of prioritizing the experiential over the didactic provides nonobjective art with way in which pictorial abstraction, protest and architecture can meet.2 Lisa Sharp October 2019

1

This interpretation is made in recent scholarship by Lynne Cooke referencing and the Anni Albers

exhibition, Tate Modern (2018) curated by Ann Coxon, Briony Fer & Maria Müller-Schareck.

2

Lynne Cooke, ‘Anni Albers: K20 Grabbeplatz’ in ARTFORUM (October 2018), accessed 12 Oct 2019 https://www. artforum.com/print/reviews/201808/anni-albers-76737

Solo Exhibitions 2018 A-four to A-zero Factory49 Marrickville 2017 Coves, Cliffs and Creeks Willoughby City Council Foyer 2015 Extreme Fire Warning Montsalvat Eltham Victoria 2013 Once Jean Bellette Gallery Hill End Awards 2019 Finalist North Sydney Art Prize Finalist Sculpture at Scenic World 2018 Finalist Greenway Art Prize Finalist Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize Finalist Wyndham Art Prize Finalist Swan Hill Print and Drawing Prize 2017 Finalist North Sydney Art Prize 2016 Winner Emerging Artist Award Sculpture at Sawmillers 2015 Highly Commended -Blacktown City Art Prize Finalist Fishers Ghost Art Prize 2014 Finalist Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize 2013 Winner – Blacktown City Art Prize, Environmental Art Prize Highly commended -Muswellbrook Art Prize 2012 Winner – Blacktown City Art Prize, Works on Paper Commissioned work 2017 Art for the Planet Darling Quarter Sydney 2013 Middle Head: 33 deg 50’ S, 151 deg 14’ E, Mosman Art Gallery

Cementa13 Contemporary Arts Festival Kandos Education 2011 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) National Art School 1976 Bachelor of Architecture (Hons ) UNSW

1st edition of 50 Photographs by Tara Lyubicic Design by Pam Aitken November 2019 ©