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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nInstallation view of Jennifer Murphy, Grains of Sand<\/em> at Clint Roenisch Gallery<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her poems, as I have chosen to call them, are in essence constructed from readymades. And it is no accident, I feel, that her practice in this sense parallels those of some of the Dada movement in the early twentieth century. Dadaist Tristan Tzara, for example, explained how to make a Dada poem: First find a newspaper article, cut out all the words individually, place them in a bag, shake them up and pick out the words one after the other \u2013 the order they randomly come out produces the desired poem. Likewise Murphy cuts up images from chosen books and magazines. Although how she combines them, unlike the Dadaist, is not determined by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n Jennifer Murphy, Renunciation of the Self for Future Generations<\/em>, 2025, used book paper collage, shell, 16 x 28 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dada arose in reaction to the seismic political and economic upheavals of the time, while the First Great War was underway. Events reached an absurdity of tragic proportions. Politics became a cruel spectacle full of hate and wanton destruction, driven by the greed of the ruling class \u2013 pleonexia<\/em>, as I have heard one commentator, named Richard J. Murphy (coincidentally), aptly call this phenomenon. Ditto today. She is motivated, as she explains, by \u2018our current world full of converging emergencies including the rise of fascism, disinformation, war and forced displacement, grave inequality, resource depletion, and the climate disaster, which are all exacerbated by colonial, capitalistic, and extractive forces.\u2019 A veritable litany of woes.<\/p>\n\n\n Jennifer Murphy, Woven Together<\/em>, 2025, used book paper collage, shell, 16 x 24 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tone of Murphy\u2019s work is very different from that of the Dadaists, whose brash performances and blatant absurdity reflected that of society at large. Murphy\u2019s is more a lament \u2013 a hushed tone that is easier to pass over. She points to the fact that we are bounded by nature and the chaotic forces that drive it. In nature there is a procession of extinctions, as life-forms spring up and disappear with an inevitability that parallels our own births and deaths. Accordingly, she talks of interdependencies in between ourselves and the rest of nature, and declares that through her work she hopes \u201cto highlight our role and responsibility to the world\u2019s fragile ecosystems and one another by harnessing an attentiveness through beauty, levity and wonder\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n Jennifer Murphy, To Hold Dust<\/em>, 2025, used book paper collage, coal, 15 x 22 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n The qualities of \u2018beauty, levity and wonder\u2019, that Murphy strives for, contrast with the Dadaists\u2019 expressions of anger and dismay. For them events pointed to the absurdity or meaningless of life, hence their celebration of nonsense poetry for example. The civilization we have constructed, by so-called rational means, is in fact \u2018logically nonsensical\u2019, to paraphrase Hans Arp. Murphy\u2019s reaction to our current crises couldn\u2019t be more different. Her work shares none of the didacticism of the Dadaism, its overt politics. Rather, she aims for pathos \u2013 a sense of wonder and tenderness. She appears to see in nature a path to redemption, based on a secular version of the thought expressed by Samuel Coleridge when he wrote, that on observing nature, \u2018shalt thou see and hear the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible of that eternal language, which thy God utters, …\u2019 (Frost at Midnight). According to Murphy: \u201cTo navigate and survive our world today and to grasp these complex interconnections inherent to it we must embrace solidarity, empathy, wonder, and a radical persistent resilience to imagine a more caring, collective future\u201d. These are qualities she wishes to encourage us to value.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n