GOMA Waterford
15 July- 16 Aug 2026
Official Launch, Thurs 2 July
6 – 8pm.
15 July- 16 Aug 2026
Official Launch, Thurs 2 July
6 – 8pm.
Mise en abyme
Official Launch, Thursday 23 July, 6 – 8pm.
Guest speaker – Cristín Leach.
Cristín Leach is an Irish author, radio and television presenter, journalist and art critic.
Murphy draws from her background in theatre and influences from psychoanalysis and magic realism. Delving into theatrical settings, she captures moments of quiet and stillness. Through recurring symbols such as curtains, deserted stages, and performative environments, she investigates the thin line between illusion and reality, presence and absence.
In Western art history, ‘mise en abyme’ is the technique of placing a copy of an image within itself. Murphy uses this concept as a metaphor to investigate the boundaries between real and fictive spaces, concentrating on recurring motifs of theatre curtains, outdoor carousels, circus tents, performative sites, city parks and empty stages. This work addresses the essential nature of photographic seeing, performance, and Freud’s notion of the uncanny where the familiar becomes suddenly strange and disconcerting through a play between presence and absence, evoking both enchantment and a pang of unease.
Mise en abyme originally commissioned by Nora Hickey M’Sichili Director Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris 2024 In association with Photo Museum Ireland and Golden Thread Gallery Belfast the exhibition toured in Ireland in 2025
