Ruth Murray

The main themes of Ruth Murray's practice are the tension of change, the agitation of youth and the feelings of alienation and paranoia associated with misunderstood experiments/rituals. Ruth stages and directs elaborate scenes and then works from photographs of these back at the studio, drawing out and transforming them into something more significant. The resulting scenarios are claustrophobically rich and dreamlike, inviting the viewer into private worlds and states of mind, where everything seems to change shape. Biography Ruth Murray (b.1984, Birmingham, UK) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008, where she was awarded the Stanley Smith Scholarship to study and the Sheldon Bergh Award for her final show. In her graduation year she also won the De Laszlo Prize for Portraiture and the Boundary Gallery Figurative Art Prize. Following this she was Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome and an artist-in-residence at Glogauair (Berlin), Pro Artibus (Finland), Kaus Australis (Rotterdam) and USF (Bergen). This year she had a solo exhibition ‘Keruffle’ at the North Wall Art Gallery, Oxford, and was selected for the Threadneedle Figurative Art Prize. Other notable exhibitions include Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi's 4 New Sensations, The Creative Cities Collection, and the BP Portrait Award.