but here alone (2022 – 2023), uses as a starting point Freud’s definition of the Uncanny — ‘that class of terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar’. In this nascent series of works Murphy is drawn to the Parisian Carousel as both image and locus. They simultaneously suggest or provoke a strange familiarity of a delightful childlike pastime and a deep sense of unease. Touching on elements of Magic Realism, images of shuttered carousels provoke a tension between the real and the imaginary, as something normal gathers a sense of abnormality the longer they are looked at.