STUART MURRAY - CELL PROJECT SPACE

Stuart Murray, Cell Project Space,
16 Jun – 22 July
258 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA

Stuart Murray is a Spy


Crap jobs I have had include:

• Putting the walnuts in walnut whips [I only did this for a day but the girl next to me fainted on the conveyor belt (imagine this bit)]
• Peeling potatoes by the sack load [I did this sitting outside a pub and daydreamed about being in an early Van Gogh],
• Stuffing letters to opticians and ophthalmologist in a grand Georgian room that was supposedly used to be Jack B. Yeat’s studio. When no one was looking I searched the room for paint drips but found none.
• Packing Brylcreem lids into boxes hurriedly trying keeping up with the machine, while a South African man shouted at me over the noise, describing how beautiful his country was with wonderful wild flowers.
Lucky for me, I wasn’t sent to the much-discussed ‘chicken factory’. What happens to you there is still very much a mystery, perhaps it is a place where you become a non-person and never manage to escape the underworld.

The best thing about the crap jobs was that I wasn’t really like my other workers; I was there undercover, an artist. I was a spy. Stuart Murray is also a spy.

When I walked into Cell I found a crisp white pure space, where clean attractive people looked at the results of Stuart Murray’s undercover information gathering, contained in books arranged on tables. He has recorded his interactions with the homeless, drunks and fellow temporary workers. These temporary people are the ones who society perpetually tramples and rejects, people we try to hide and move on: actively ignore.

This data is in the form of pen drawings of the individual and hand written record of what they said. Reading them transported me to a dismal gloomy Glasgow underworld. I could smell the fags, piss and alcohol. How many different ways can you ask for money? How many strategies are there for apologetically giving nothing? My favourite person in ‘On the Street’ was the woman who asked Murray not for money but if he lived in a house. If so, could she live with him?

This exhibition is crammed full of moments with people who are normally hidden. Lots of people should see this show, especially not just the art world.