Reclaiming

About

Carolyn Murphy's first solo exhibition 'Reclaiming' opens at Holborn Library on Saturday 14 October, as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2023. Carolyn has 3 installation works in the show, all pieces she has created during her MA in Fine Art Printmaking at Middlesex University.

• Reclaiming - monotype, with collage, 4 panels, 2022
• No stone unturned IV - hand-printed 3-D paper structures, 2023
• A world we share? - repeat-pattern etching with emboss and hand embellishment, 2023

Her work is inspired by landscape, especially human interventions in the world around us. Themes include fragility, decay, loss and renewal. This exhibition reflects on nature’s power to reclaim.

Talking about Reclaiming, Carolyn explains “The image is from a ruin I visited on walks in the Colne Valley (West Yorkshire), once considered to be a place where trees would not grow, in the damaged industrial landscape. Since the 1960s volunteers have planted over 300,000 trees.”

No stone unturned IV suggests solidity but the ‘rocks’ are simply folded from hand-printed paper. Lichens are the perfect symbiosis of two species, able to grow in the most challenging of environments and a pioneer species for further new life.

A world we share? looks at dry stone walling. Walls can be seen as a symbol of building - and of boundaries. We humans destroy much in our path. Here new habitats are also created, first inhabited by lichens and mosses, then by plants, small mammals and even birds.

“My work balances decay and growth. The Bloomsbury Festival 2023 theme is 'Grow'  which fits well with these works and my MA studies, which connect to my own personal growth, following a period of health challenges,” Carolyn explains.