Bethany Murray: Theatre BA(Hons) graduate

I graduated from Dartington with a first in Theatre in 1995. It seems a long time ago but the experience of studying at Dartington has always stayed with me and continues to inspire me. I had a very happy and expansive time there, learning about multidisciplinary approaches to art-making, using the body, the self, all thought about in terms of collaboration rather than commercialism and production. This in itself now seems unique. The boundaries were fluid. I wrote, sang, made installations, performed and travelled, including three months in Holland training the body at SNDO (School for New Dance Development), where I remember whole mornings spent moving across a floor.

After graduating I moved to London, continuing with choreography and dance at The Place, which led to projects with dance companies and live experimental theatre. As the interesting work was often unpaid, I also worked commercially, making pop videos and short films, (including Placebo and a horror film with Charley Boorman, On Edge), though I often wanted to be more directive, in the way Dartington had encouraged. I found a way of doing this by using the camera as the directive eye, which, together with using a performative approach, felt right.

I first worked in this way on a project based in Southern Italy, recording performers who worked with Tarantella. The leader of the group, who had worked with Dario Fo in the early days, allowed me free reign for experimentation. I worked on stage and off, and used my video work for them in Paris. This was followed by a part-time technical photographic course at Central St. Martin's and a week's course with a Magnum photographer. My next project involved interviewing and photographing 50 recycling dustmen in East London. I began to utilise methods I had learnt through improvisation and devised theatre. This led to my first body of photographic work, based in rural Cumbria and using myself as the performer. This work, Performance Pieces: Interior/Landscape, was bought by the University Art Collection in 2005. They promoted my work in London with commercial buyers, which led to my being represented by Millennium Images. As I continued combining my practices I began leading workshops for young people on using performance with photography.
Bethany Murray

I was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council full scholarship in 2006, for the full-time MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martins. My tutor, artist Sonia Boyce, encouraged me to challenge my approach to the photographic. For two months I did not look through the lens, but attached different cameras to my body, producing body photographs, echoing experiments by the structuralist filmmakers of the 1960s. I wrote a performative piece, Performing Places, which led to my recent work Avoided Spaces where, together with others, I performed scenes in spaces which held an emotive or personal element. I completed my MA with Distinction, and have since exhibited Avoided Spaces as part of group shows in London and Portugal and currently with Royal Hibernian Academy and Monster Truck in Dublin. I am planning a solo show in 2008.

In all my work I continue to use the multidisciplinary and collaborative approach with which Dartington first allowed me to experiment, and for which I am very grateful.

Beth can be reached at:
beth@bethanymurray.co.uk
http://www.bethanymurray.co.uk/