M. Eileen Murray is a visual artist whose work is materiality based and exploits the physical characteristics of painted surfaces to serve as metaphors for bravado, material excess and accumulation. She has exhibited in public galleries throughout western Canada and has attended residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts and Emma Lake Artist Workshops. Murray holds an M.F.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and a B.F.A., Great Distinction, from the University of Lethbridge. For the past twenty plus years, she has resided with her family on a mixed farm just outside of Brooks Alberta.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My studio practice is a contemporary inquiry into domestic space and its relationship to theatricality, spectacle, memory and nostalgia. It is a response to how the spectacle of consumer culture relies upon the home to embody a place of memory and imagination in order to demonstrate goods in a fashion that evokes ideas of the simple domestic times of yesterday, of nostalgia, and of a return to elegance. My work explores the manifestation of home renovation

and decoration consumerism and its success at seducing society into the excessiveness of current trends like chandeliers, hand-knotted rugs, collections of tchotchkes.

April – August, 2018