Sheree Murphy

Artist statement

My medium is photography, I specialise in the traditional process of taking a photograph and the darkroom printing process being analogue photography. Like my medium my subject and interests represent an historical and nostalgic approach. My current project Nurtured in Concrete form began when I started photographing my Grandfather's home who had passed away in 2005. I was curious to learn more about my Grandfather of whom I knew very little of at the time. By photographing his home the project and collection gathered momentum and became a catharsis for historical regression into my family's past uncovering secrets, sexuality, religion, illness and emigration, relating to my family's ancestral roots in Southern Ireland and the impact of the potato famine of 1845. Nurtured in Concrete Form is a therapeutic collection of past life regression taking photographic form. The element of nostalgia and reflection have played an influential role to my artist practice that have coincided with my gravitas and great interest in the arts as a form of therapy and aiding health and wellbeing. Photographers that have been influential to the theory and challenges of my practice; Walker Evans and Dorothea Lang and the challenges they faced when recording the great depression and contemporary artist Rozanne Hawksley with her intimate subjects of loss and identity.