HANNAH MURRAY | 'Cantaloupe Island' | Mixed media on board

HANNAH MURRAY is a Cairns-based contemporary artist and arts educator. Hannah works in a range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, and more recently, product and fabric design. 

Murray’s tropical vanitas and floating worlds are deliberately idyllic, almost cliché representations and attempt to capture the beautiful, fecund, yet often hostile duality of living in the hot, humid, and volatile tropics. On the surface, the work appears strangely seductive and evokes wry notions of beauty or utopia. However, beneath the surface, the work also aims to provide a bittersweet reminder of the fleeting and fragile nature of all worldly delights, and themes of loss and melancholy are ever-present.

"Created using a selection of drawing and printing media, my work is from an ongoing series titled 'Happy Hour'. With origins as far back as Shakespeare, the words 'happy' & 'hour' have appeared together for centuries and are used to reference designated periods of drinking, entertainment, and pleasurable times. 'Happy Hour' in tropical paradise is the epitome of decadence in hedonistic western society. The exotic allure of North Queensland is no exception. Promoted as being "no place like it on earth" holidaymakers are enticed to escape to luxe island hideaways and indulgent retreats. The aim of my work is to challenge the treacherous duality of 'Happy Hour' by asking viewers to look beyond the rose-colored glass and consider the consequences of such fleeting pleasures. My greatest concern is that in our insatiable pursuit for happiness we are inadvertently contributing to the demis of a; ready fragile environmental and cultural systems" 

HANNAH MURRAY | 'Cantaloupe Island' | 2020 | Mixed media on board / framed | 53 (h) x 45 (w) 3 (d) cm

This work comes framed in floating box timber.