Kendal Murray

Born 1958, Broken Hill, Australia

Lives & Works – Sydney (Eora)

Kendal Murray’s miniature sculptures stage dream-like narratives that transport us to a place of wishful thinking, where we are invited to play, imagine, and fantasise about possibilities outside the reality of the everyday. Found objects such as tea cups and saucers, mirrored compacts and grass covered purses are used as eccentric stages for her tiny characters to enact a range of playful and dramatic scenarios. Each tableau vivant in miniature is imbued with social, symbolic and personal meanings that entice us to invest our own desires into the pleasurable outcomes of the stories being told, while offering a mirror to our idiosyncrasies.

Murray has had numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and her work is held in public and private collections in Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the UK, New York and Australia, including the Powerhouse Museum, Goulburn Regional Gallery, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, University of Western Sydney, University of New South Wales and the Commonwealth Bank Collection. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Deakin Small Sculpture Prize (2015) and the Beowulf Award in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2015). Her work has also been selected as finalist multiple times in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2023, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2004, 2001). She holds an MA (Hons) in Visual Art.