As an artist who came of age during the tumultuous final stages of apartheid, Brett Murray combines rigorous craft and pop aesthetics with provocative political commentary, bravely exploring power, populism and identity within South Africa as well as far beyond it. A graduate of the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Art, he also established the sculpture department at the University of Stellenbosch and was recognised as the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in 2002. Murray’s sculptures, prints and other works are contained in a multitude of collections in his home country and around the world.
Q > Motivation: What makes you get out of bed in the morning?
A > Before kids, it was the tug of a good coffee and whatever was going on in the studio that got me out of bed. Now it is having to get the kids up and out of bed for school, fed and clothed, with brushed teeth… delivered to school… and then it’s the tug of a good coffee and whatever is going on in the studio that motivates me. I’m fortunate: my work is my pleasure.
Q > What is the biggest mistake you’ve made?
A > Driving absolutely pissed into a lamppost in Mowbray in my parents uninsured Golf without a license… very lucky to have survived both my parents’ rage and an early end. One of the many reasons I have been sober for 20 years now…
Q > The hardest thing you’ve ever done?
A > Parenting. Or trying to parent… it is also the most rewarding. Funny that.
Q > In what period or location have you learnt the most?
A > From my friends and peers at art school… where I spent 10 years. And certainly, through travel: Malawi, Mozambique, Vietnam, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Portugal, Chile, UK, USA, Botswana, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand… and all the other places I have ever travelled to.
Q > What’s your favourite ritual?
A > If there is no real studio pressure, late on Friday afternoons I go down the YouTube rabbit hole, discovering new music and finding old favourites. I throw myself at the mercy of the interwebs’ algorithms.
Q > Is work personal to you: do you keep your work separate from your personal life?
A > My work is intimately connected with my personal life. It’s also deeply therapeutic. I can’t help combining the political with the personal. Where I do separate work from life is over weekends…I prefer to hang with my family and friends. So I try to structure my timetable so that the weekends are free from studio time.
Q > What taboo subjects should we be discussing more, and how should these conversations be ignited?
A > Political correctness should be blown apart. The suppression of debate and cyber bullying of contrary viewpoints on all internet platforms should be confronted. Notions of “cultural appropriation” should be exposed for its shortsighted and balkanised view of lived experiences. The monitoring and censure of how individual experiences can and can’t be expressed and shared should be debunked.
In this divided world order… Ry Cooder could never have rediscovered the old Cuban crooners and put together the magical Buena Vista Social Club… Wim Wenders would not have been allowed to make a documentary about this journey… David Byrne would not have been able to segue into Rei Momo, his first solo album post Talking Heads, full of delicious Latin and South American sounds… and similarly, more recently… Angelique Kidjo would not be allowed to have made her recent gorgeous album of Talking Heads covers. In the current climate, Billie Holiday would not be allowed to sing Strange Fruit, a song based on Abel Meeropol’s haunting poem protesting against the inhumanity of racism, because he is a white middle class man. In the literary world someone called this “the death of fiction”. Not a world I want to live in… because it’s not the world I live in.
Q > Which things would you like to include more in your life, what would you like to include less of?
A > More kindness and less cynicism…