With a Brett Murray show, you always get a mixture of the infuriatingly obvious and the astonishingly sublime, but in Sleep Sleep the latter is by far the dominant element. This is Murray’s most successful exhibition yet, a wonderful congruence of impish whimsy and accomplished craftsmanship.
It’s almost as if a small percentage of the work is made for the T-shirt sales and the rest for the collectors of great art. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s something that Murray does willfully, a trite and testy formula that forces you into a predetermined relationship with his art. Some might also argue that having an easy way into a collection of art results in the viewer being encouraged to work to understand, and indeed to enjoy, the complex pieces. You’ve had a sniff at the rewards, so you’re willing to try harder.
So Dear Lord, one of a series of parodies of an embroidered sampler, showing two kids praying with the words “Look after daddy while he nukes Iraq”, points you towards a more politically charged understanding of a piece such as Martyr (a black Casper the Friendly Ghost in a contorted pose of crucifixion).
But it’s hard to see much satirical heft in a piece such as Dual Economy, two companion signs hanging alongside each other. The one on the left reads, “Please help me. I have not eaten. For three days.” The one on the right reads, “Foolish man. That you are. You must try. If need be, you must. Force yourself.” I love a crap joke as much as the next person, but this isn’t the one I’d have chosen to immortalise in metal.
Where Murray’s artorisms work (“artorisms” are defined by Collins* as aphorisms that are infused with new power and meaning by virtue of the artistic medium in which they are expressed), they work wonderfully. The strongest of the artorism pieces is Liberals Mantra, the phrase “I am an optimist” written on the wall seven times in metal and fool’s gold.
That’s damn funny and being funny is a large part of what Murray does. Of course, it’s that special kind of funny where you laugh and wince in equal parts, and sometimes suspect that the joke is on you. Liberals Mantra’s conceptual companion piece is the less effective (because satirically obvious) Emotional Mediation. It also merrily mocks you in fool’s gold, with the words “But Oprah will cry for us”.
The loveliest pieces on show are Donkey, Gorilla and Little Pig, big, beautifully bulbous bronze sculptures made up of equal parts cuteness and menace. The bronzes are iconic animals — the donkey that’s so important to Christianity, the pig so frequently reviled on inexplicable (at least to the pig) religious grounds and the gorilla so central to humans’ complicatedly evolving relationship with the natural world.
I noticed that people would circle the sculptures again and again, as if each successive circuit brought a new appreciation. And it’s true that the characters, ominously distant relatives of the cartoon figures used elsewhere in Murray’s work, change their hue and character depending on the angles from which they are viewed. It’s as if pop culture has been created in the style of the old masters and the effect is one of disjuncture tinged with glee.
That’s probably the best description of what Murray has accomplished with Sleep Sleep. The familiar will amuse you, at the same time as you’re slightly discomfited by inappropriate beauty and off-kilter crassness. And there’s an astonishing variety here, truly something for everyone, even if it’s not something you thought you might want.
Sleep Sleep is on at the Joao Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town, until October 28
*A Zimbabwean I met in the street, not the dictionary. See, this Dual Economy thing just isn’t funny.
Chris Roper is the editor of 24.com