These collages of physically manipulated landscapes are inspired by the excessive amount of travel ads and digital imagery - We don't know what is real anymore, and what isn't.

Transition

Collection of 9 oil paintings on panel, each 3.5 x 5 inches. Each image sourced from a family zoom call.

2020

Zoom Call on my 21st Birthday

Slipcast stoneware, glaze and luster, 9,5x11x6 inches, 2021

Amphora (Purex)

Flexur, tempera, oil and acrylic on cotton canvas, 210x135cm, 2020

Flexur

Of Beyond and Of After, 2019
mixed media on Tyvek
Size (h w d): 51 x 27 x 11 in

Of Beyond and Of After

every saturday the child must go, removed from one life and placed into another. a forced relationship and a feigned connection.

there are only trees here: the bleak forested landscapes of the housing estates they walked, the only witnesses to this time.
no recreation and minimal effort.

the rest of the week, living as someone else. someone longing for another’s name. a welcome relationship and true connection. the one eventually chosen.

for years, using hands to make sense of what happened. talking and making, attempting to heal, attempting to understand. the link between craft and catharsis grew deeply ingrained and entangled roots.

and then one day, a conversation. the abscission, the severance. just like that, leaving one life behind, but forever haunted.


Every Saturday (1993-present)
The work to date looks at the relationship I had with my biological father, in light of the discovery that I have two Birth Certificates on file in the Irish Civil Registry System.

Using ephemera from the landscapes where we spent time together, on court ordered Saturdays for the first ten years of my life, I create new documents and assemblages which demonstrate the desire to regain control; over my own sense of self, and over a time when I felt I had none. This childlike crafting reflects cathartic processes introduced to me from an early age through therapy and counselling, processes of working through trauma by creating and making.

Along with this, I have revisited my family archive. In these documents, the other half of my life is recorded. My family and I. My mother and I. My Dad and I. While this archive is completely devoid of any trace of my biological father’s physical presence, and my own memory incapable of recalling his form, I have unearthed visual clues and triggers in the photographs which allude to his haunting presence in my life. Through this reflective process of revisiting and re-appropriating both photographs and documents, I weave a narrative that finally speaks for this little girl, my younger self, who was desperate to align herself with one identity, one family, and one Dad.

Despite being born out of what has felt like unresolved trauma and a sense of conflicting identities, the project has in many ways become a celebration. Not only of my own personal resilience in the face of my experiences but also of the Dad I chose and the love he had for me which has never faltered.

Every Saturday

photograph of installation piece, 2020, Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland

IT'S ALL FOR YOU

Unity is a 45x60cm acrylic painting.

​The '36 Series' is an ongoing painted exploration into a geometric grid of 36, which are varying in both size and material. The series examines the idea of 'Lusus Naturae/Sport' within the realms of geometry. Each possible outcome is explored within the grid until one emerges as unique and becomes a part of the series.

Unity

In 1961, in the small Spanish village of San Sebastian de Garabandal, four young girls had an apparition of the Virgin Mary. They entered a state of ecstasy in which they became completely unaware of their surroundings and sensory perceptions. Reportedly, witnesses would pinch the girls, pierce their skin with needles, lift them up and drop them onto rough rocks, and yet they remained entranced. The light and presence of the Virgin is all they claim to have experienced. Twenty years later, in the town of Medjugorje, Bosnia & Herzegovina, six children also had simultaneous visions of the Virgin, with similar ecstatic qualities. 

‘Noema’ represents my search for the presence of the Virgin Mary in these two locations.

Noema

Oil on wood
122cm x 161cm x 8cm
2021

AIRBAG serie

""The artwork to which Teresa Murta has accustomed us, persists in the figurative modelling of soul elements that presuppose our curious gaze and our own interpretation. These open dialogues between the artist and the work go beyond their solitary moment - "beauty cannot reproduce itself, it must be reproduced" (Jean Lescure), and result in a reflection of astonishment in the viewer.

AIRBAG is an intoxicated statement about the control and acceptance of the unknown, the responsibility of being in charge of a direction that refers to the terrible consternation of the void. Murta suggests to us a dripping of strong oneiric influence of automatic painting which she identifies as her action painting.

In this dialogue of intuitive experimentation by Teresa, art frees itself from the impositions of logic and reason and goes beyond everyday consciousness, where beauty is a paradox, which arises not only from the gathering of disparate elements, but from the strength of the moments that precede the representation on canvas. She models them in her painting according to her will, through plasticity and transparency, where each layer reflects change and movement and even pause and emptiness, which the artist imposes as a moment of observation. The wonder of Murta emerges from everyday life and is revealed to us without any pyrotechnics.

A world of reflections and essays to create a reality, where yesterday, today and tomorrow are always the present time, the only possible time in Teresa Murta's artwork.
“If everything is real... then nothing is real as well” – The Angriest Dog in the World, 1973 David Lynch.""

Mercedes Cerón, art director

Fuel

who am I?!

This is a couple in love, lying on the sofa in a time that recalls the war years. This painting was made during the curfew period in the covid pandemic.

Gli amanti

The Time-Light Map was a one year project exploring the nature of memory. 

It consists of a physical model made up of seven layers, each representing a different element of our physical world: 
air - ground - fire - gravity - duality - water - entropy 

Each completed layer was photographed, and then incorporated into the construction of subsequent layers. The images are, therefore, the surviving representations of the model at each stage of its development (except the final one). 

Made of clear acrylic and white card, the model is almost entirely transparent. The colors depicted in the images were generated from the reflection and refraction of natural light. They were transitory and dependent on the quality of light, the weather, the time of day and the season when they were photographed. 

The images represent fragments of time — memories. 

Time-Light Map | Layer 5: Duality [1] 

Spaghetti Mouth 

2016

sponge recycled, hot glue
width: 97 cm, other dimensions are dependent on the exposure

“Lubię cukierki, nawet kiedy smakują jak kamyki”
[“I like sweets, even when they taste like pebbles”]
Ksiągarnia/Wystawa, Krakow

curators: Vera Zalutskaya, Piotr Policht, Agata Jabłońska, 
	     Anna Gil, Marta Kuźmińska

Rolled sponge balot consists of a relief modules, which in their dimensions are based on real dimensions side face (one side of the brick). Glued together with shorter side reach stripes approx. 35 meters, which in turn create pavement width approx. 97 cm. The color depends on the degree 
of soiling or the original shade of recycled upholstery sponge.

Through this realization I wanted to catch the excess, collect, amass, organize, and give a new meaning to what human being has abandoned and treated as waste. The object follows from 
a deep need to get order in private space, as well as social.

EXPOSURE - Belot partially developed
	
The installation, like a red carpet unfolds before the viewer. He moves about the way of life, join to the unknown path, follow it along, measuring the obstacles and opportunities to explore the further potential. The confrontation with the viewer, developed fragment is an invitation to discover its individual components.
I care for unique experience of the matter, on re-contact with her and getting to know her again.
	
I put the question: where are we going [in this way]? Are the goal important? Is the end, the point where we want to stay? Where is the end of the search? E.t.c.

ASPECT

10 Year Plan is the only plan you will need.   A popular doodle by @stevexoh that has sold hundreds of copies as a print.

Materials: acrylic pens on paper.

10 Year Plan

Photography and Digital. 1184 × 1013

Nightmare

Induced Insecurities
2021
91.4 cm x 152.4 cm
Emulsions, Acrylics, Oil Sticks and Oil Pastels on Canvas

Induced Insecurities

Ultimately the idea behind “Banded Blue” is beauty, desire, over-consumption and the effects climate change has had on pollinators. Over the last decade their habitats and populations have been in steep decline across the globe. Pollinators are considered keystone species because their survival is vital to the survival of other species. They help to maintain healthy ecosystems, essential for plant reproduction, and genetic diversity in the plants they pollinate.

Banded Blue

Moving sculpture with my own accordion music

Fall in…, these two words have a lot of very different meanings: fall into somewhere; fall in love; to begin to participate in something, to become organized in a particular way; to experience a significant, usually unpleasant, change in state, to obtain something, typically unexpectedly or with little effort…

With these two figures one of these is happening, right now. Which one? Are they helping each other or are they fighting?

Made from found stuff, a given vinyl record and wire.

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