Cross Form Emerging is an ongoing series of wall-mounted objects that explore the relationship between containment and transformation through a recurring 2:1 cruciform (cross form) motif, which appears to break out of its rectangular frame, emphasizing structural tension and spatial projection. The works are constructed in steel using traditional brazing methods, with visible brass and silver seams that reveal the making process. The 2:1 cruciform motif also references another strand of the artist’s practice, where a 2:1 rectangle is employed in graphite and linen monochromes.
Touched is a photographic portrait depicting the artist’s hand covered in graphite powder after making the graphite-burnished frame in which the photograph is mounted. The work highlights Murray’s critical concern with image–object spatial dynamics and bodily relationships to material.
For ten years, Murray has pursued a strand of practice centred on a 2:1 rectangle, conceived as a formally reduced representation of the human body. These linen and graphite monochromes reference forms and methods of painting, yet deliberately reject its fundamental convention of applying paint to a surface, instead asserting their status as objects. This reflects the artist's critical engagement with the visual medium and its expanded conceptions.
'Shifter' is an ongoing series of works on linen, jute and hessian with a solitary handprint placed in the lower, leftmost third of the picture plane—a formal anchor enabling iterative explorations of minimal mark-making using wine, rainwater, and earth pigments.
Human beings are the only species with hands that possess a unique combination of anatomical features: an opposable thumb, a highly flexible wrist, and long, dexterous fingers. Unlike other primates, humans exhibit a distinctively low ratio of finger to palm length, a proportion that enhances both grip and fine motor control, extending the hand’s expressive and functional range. These particularities enable the making of handprints that are uniquely human.
Beyond its biomechanics, the human hand functions on a symbolic plane: across the world’s religions, the hand holds enduring symbolic power — a point of contact between the physical and the spiritual. For example, in Christianity, the Hand of God appears in iconography as a sign of divine authority and intervention. In Islam, the Hand of Fatima (Khamsa) serves as a protective symbol against harm. In Hinduism, ritual hand gestures (mudras) embody metaphysical states and cosmic principles — a practice shared with Buddhism, where mudras express the teachings and attributes of the Buddha. In Judaism, the raised hand in the birkat kohanim blessing signifies divine transmission. In Jainism, the open palm bearing the wheel — the ahimsa hand — represents nonviolence, ethical restraint, and the sanctity of life.
This persistent cross-cultural symbolism underscores the handprint’s role as a ‘universal form’—a signifier of human presence and absence simultaneously. In this duality, the handprint parallels the photographic image: it paradoxically refers to a subject that is at once ‘here/now’ yet ‘there/then’—an imprint present, a gesture past.
