Carolyn Murphy is a Manchester-based artist, specialising in printmaking and installation. She joined the Printmakers Council (PMC) in 2021 after following members’ zoom talks during the pandemic. Since then, she has taken part in several PMC exhibitions – at Mandell’s Gallery in Norwich, Emma Mason Gallery, Eastbourne and at Bankside Gallery in London. Carolyn is interested in the landscapes we create and our complex interrelationship with the environment. She is a keen walker and regularly gets out on the hills, particularly the Pennines. For the last two years, she has split her time between Manchester and London, to complete a part-time MA in Fine Art Printmaking at Middlesex University in Hendon. During the MA, she has expanded her practice in new directions, including print installation and site-specific works.
Carolyn is inspired by moorlands, wild coastlines and the vestiges of human impact over time, including in the post-industrial spaces and edgelands of our cities. These are fragile and decaying locations, but also sites of renewal. Her works often grapple with loss and play with illusions of stability and control. Through her landscapes, she investigates ideas of damage and repair, fragmentation, the superficial and the hidden.
Carolyn Murphy with Reclaiming – Bloomsbury Festival, October 2023
‘Reclaiming’ was developed for an exhibition at Mile End Art Pavilion in July 2022. Talking about ‘Reclaiming’, Carolyn explains “The image is based on 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.”
Her 3D work includes a series of paper sculptures, ‘No stone unturned’, in various sizes and shapes. They suggest solidity but these ‘rocks’ are simply hand-printed paper; monotypes, folded and held together without glue, sometimes in precarious towers. She is fascinated by lichens, the perfect symbiosis of two species, able to grow in the most challenging of environments and a pioneer species for further new life.
Carolyn is a member of Fankle art collective, with other Middlesex University alumni, whose first exhibition together, outside of their studies, was in July 2023 at the Coningsby Gallery. A second show is soon to be announced for this summer. Carolyn enjoys the community aspect of printmaking, like workshops and group shows, and has taken part in the 20:20 print exchange since 2011. A member of Hot Bed Press in Salford, and Prospect Printmakers in Rossendale, she has recently also joined East London Printmakers, as an associate member.
Carolyn uses a range of traditional printmaking techniques in her 2D and 3D work, from etching to lino and woodcut. More recently she has embraced monotype and collagraph printmaking. She enjoys experimenting and exploring, particularly gaps, edges, textures, patterns and chance. ‘Below the Pike’, a collagraph, inspired by the moorland landscapes of West Yorkshire, was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023. She has also exhibited at Towneley Hall (Burnley), Bury Art Museum, The Whitaker (Rossendale) and The Longitude Gallery (Clitheroe). Carolyn has a new work in the forthcoming Printmakers Council exhibition ‘Surface Challenge’ at Barbican Library, 2 – 26 February.
‘A world we share?’, a repeat pattern etching suggesting dry stone walling, was a key element of Carolyn’s exhibition as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2023. Reaching across the wall of Holborn Library, it was roughly 3.2m x 2.6m in size. Walls can be symbols of building – and of boundaries. We humans destroy so much in our path. Here new habitats are also created, first inhabited by lichens and mosses, then by plants, small mammals and even birds. Talking about her work, she explains “My work often balances decay and growth. My MA studies have helped me connect this with my own personal journey, following a period of health challenges.”
Many of the works in Carolyn’s final show of her MA, in December, were inspired by the area around Winter Hill, north of Manchester. It’s a Pennine moorland that is still recovering from fires that burnt in the peat above and below ground for weeks in 2018. ‘Winter Hill’ is a monotype in six panels, with collage and burnt sections, roughly 1.8m x 0.7m.
Having first experienced printmaking at school, she returned to it many years later and now has a studio at home, with a Hawthorn press. Carolyn’s first love was linocut, which she has taught to beginners in Manchester. Her largest linocut was a commission for the extension of the Macmillan Cancer Support Centre at Wythenshawe Hospital, back in 2018. She developed the work to reflect the highs, lows and uncertainties faced by users of the service. Moving on from a career in business and marketing, she is now focused on her printmaking, looking forward to tackling new projects and seeing where this path might lead her.
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