Artist Biography
Brett Murray studied at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded his Master’s of Fine Arts degree in 1989. The title of his dissertation is “A Group of Satirical Sculptures Examining Social and Political Paradoxes in the South African Context”. As an undergraduate he won Irma Stern Scholarships in both 1981 and 1982. He won the Simon Garson Prize for the most Promising student in 1982 and was awarded the Michaelis Prize in 1983. As a postgraduate student he received a Human Sciences Research Council bursary, a University of Cape Town Research Scholarship, the Jules Kramer Grant and an Irma Stern Scholarship.
He has exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad. From 1991 to 1994 he established the sculpture department at the University of Stellenbosch, where he curated the show Thirty Sculptors from the Western Cape in 1992. In 1995 he curated, with Kevin Brand, Scurvy, at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. That year he co-curated Junge Kunst Aus Zud Afrika for the Hänel Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1997 he organised, with Robert Wienek, the show Smokkel as a fringe event for the second Johannesburg Biennale.
In 1999, Brett co-founded, with artists and cultural practitioners Lisa Brice, Kevin Brand, Bruce Gordon, Andrew Putter, Sue Williamson, Robert Weinek and Lizza Littlewort, Public Eye, a not-for-profit company who manage and initiate art projects in the public arena with the aims to develop a greater profile for public art in Cape Town. They have initiated projects on Robben Island, worked with the cities health officials on aids awareness campaigns and initiated outdoor sculpture projects including The Spier Sculpture Biennale and Homeport, a project that Brett curated, which saw 15 artists create site specific text based works in Cape Town’s waterfront precinct. They have interfaced with cultural funding bodies as consultants and hosted multi-media events and parties across the city.
His solo shows include: White Boy Sings the Blues at the Rembrandt Gallery in Johannesburg in 1996, I love Africa at the Bell-Roberts Gallery in Cape Town in 2000, Us and Them at the Axis Gallery in New York in 2003 and Sleep Sleep at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 2006. His solo show, Crocodile Tears, was held at both the Cape Town and Johannesburg branches of The Goodman Gallery in 2007 and 2009.His recent show, Hail To The Thief, was held at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town in 2010. Murray was included on the Cuban Biennial of 1994, and subsequently his works where exhibited at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Germany. Brett was included on the group show, Springtime in Chile at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile. He was also part of the travelling show Liberated Voices, Contemporary Art From South Africa which opened at the Museum for African Art in New York in 1998. His work formed part of the shows Min(d)fields at the Kunsthaus in Baselland, Switzerland in 2004 and The Geopolitics of Animation at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville in Spain in 2007. He won the Cape Town Urban Art competition in 1998 that resulted in the public work Africa, a 3.5 metre bronze sculpture, being erected in Cape Town’s city centre. He won, with Stefaans Samcuia, the commission to produce an 8 x 30 metre wall sculpture for the foyer of the Cape Town International Convention Centre in 2003. In 2007 he completed Specimens, a large wall sculpture for the University Of Cape Town’s medical school campus.He was nominated as the Standard Bank Young Artist in 2002.
Murray is a full-time artist who works in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives with his wife Sanell Aggenbach, their daughter Lola and son Kai.
Murray’s work is housed in the following South African and international public collections:
Iziko, South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Johannesburg Art Gallery; Durban Art Gallery
Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
University of Cape Town
University of South Africa, Pretoria
Sandton Municipality, Johannesburg
BHP Billiton Collection, Johannesburg
MTN Collection, Johannesburg
Sasol Collection, Johannesburg
South African Breweries, Johannesburg
South African Broadcasting Corporation, Johannesburg
The South African Reserve Bank, Johannesburg
Vodacom Collection, Cape Town
Collection of Mikki and Stanley Weithorn, USA
