Conor Murgatroyd: Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock

EVENT DESCRIPTION

WOAW Gallery is pleased to present “Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock”, a solo exhibition by London-based painter Conor Murgatroyd. Showcasing 12 artworks that Murgatroyd created this year, the exhibition celebrates his first solo showing in Hong Kong as he takes us on an intimate journey into a world of the images that have shaped his artistic identity. Rich and vibrant, his paintings represent the beauty of the human soul in a space where subjective memories and objective history coexist.

Murgatroyd unveils a meticulously curated collection of influences that span history, blending the personal with the universal and the seen with the unseen as he envisions historical artistic visuals within the context of his own experiences. Rejecting the idea of the past as a single cohesive narrative, the artist instead highlights the act of remembrance as a deeply personal act based on human experience, blending the personal with the universal as he creates a space that immortalises the existence of the human soul.

The title “Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock” is a recognition of both the governing power and the transience of time. Whilst its passing dictates the grand narrative of history, it is simultaneously ephemeral and impossible to fix in place. Within this exhibition, Murgatroyd comes to terms with this paradox by capturing elements of his lived experience in an attempt to contain the intangible essence of chronology. In The Old Cat is Asleep…Don’t Wake Him (2024), Murgatroyd illustrates the beautiful village of Loviste, where his wife was born. The passing of time is illustrated through the beauty of life blossoming within the space, where the amount of time Murgatroyd’s family spends there every year creates a lasting impact on the human soul. Another work, titled Comfort Of The Evening (2024), depicts a scene which consists of different points in time – illustrating actors engaging in various abstract roles simultaneously, Murgatroyd depicts a space where his lived reality coexists with his imagination.

This collection of vibrant works does not simply hold reverence for Murgatroyd’s influences. The exhibition is also a story of an artist finding his own voice within these overarching grand narratives. The juxtaposition of realism and surrealism in Murgatroyd’s paintings places the presumed objectivity of history alongside the non-fixity of human experience and the subjectivity of memory, representing an interaction between the interior of his imagination and the exterior of artistic tradition. Works such as Girl On The Beach (2024) revisit Murgatroyd’s illustration of Loviste, but he blends the landscape with cubist themes of Picasso and Quan Gris, both heavy influences of the artist whenever he paints the coastal village. His resulting landscapes are indistinguishable between memory and history, layering together the beauty of history and experience. Ultimately, this personal exploration is also a testament to Murgatroyd’s deep reverence for the visual language of art history and its continuing relevance in today’s artistic discourse.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Conor Murgatroyd (b. 1995, Bradford) Studied Fine art at Chelsea College of Arts in London. He has an obsession with history which has a great influence on his work; understanding the past allows him to make sense of the tangled web of influences, events and emotions that make up the existential human experience.He implores an underlying fun witty evolution in his paintings from an immediacy of colour and figuration, weaving through to carefully constructed allegorical still life and surrealism.

Objects and symbols that build our own histories, but recognisable by all in how we transfer our emotional memories onto objects, allowing them in some way to become otherworldly.His creations compel us to view his life and ours with its raw untethered beauty, constructed in his own reality, but recognisable by all. He links together many references from social studies of human being placed in the reality of imagined environments.His paintings act as a stage which brings together the myriad of characters and objects he has come into contact with; both imaged and lived. His work comprises of a wide range of topics, from his personal still life pieces to landscape paintings, which commonly feature captured images of the past. Structured compositions using this ethos are the framework of the works he creates.