Meet our artist community: Q&As
Part of an ongoing series, members of our artist community share insights about their work, their stories and their relationship to ACAVA. Visit this page to read more.
Meet Nick Murray, our artist-in-residence at ACAVA Hosts: Barham Park Studios Residency, a career development opportunity for socially engaged artists from global majority backgrounds.
Read on to explore Nick’s artistic journey, from blending sound, games, and text into their work, to creating participatory projects that build playful and meaningful connections within communities.
Can you introduce yourself with your name, what you do and where you live?
Hello! I’m Nick Murray. I’m an artist, composer and producer from Cricklewood, London.
Can you tell us about your career/practice leading up to the Barham Park Studios Residency?
My practice has been a bit all over the place! I started out as a classical musician, which led to discovering sound art and sonic sculpture. Writing and text have always been a big part of my work and I’ve always been really into games. All of these, along with sound, are the threads running through my practice.
I believe that play can offer people a sense of ownership, over their choices (individually and communally) and over the space they inhabit. For the last eight years I’ve used my practice to explore wider societal questions, most prominently ethics within community organising through my walking game and poetry series Ebbing, which uses the River Brent as a lens to discuss the development of Brent Cross Town. I’ve also looked at memory and loss in the Internet age (through my Tamagotchi Seance series) and climate collapse (through my participatory performance game Kaiju Ecopoetics).
Why did you apply to the residency and what are you most looking forward to?
My arts practice has been quite small scale, physically, for some years. I really enjoy making the sort of thing that can fit in the palm of your hand, pieces that rely on rules or instructions, or that you can physically manipulate, whether that looks like game pieces or is a controller for a digital work.
Despite really enjoying working at this scale a lot of it has been dictated by a lack of space. It’s difficult sustaining a studio practice in London!
I haven’t had the opportunity make work in a studio for a very long time. Having a space to spread out, make a mess, and play is incredibly exciting.
I’m really keen to take advantage of the space as a place for bringing people together too. Folks living near the park as well as other artists living or working in the city. It feels like an opportune time to share our feelings about the future and play around with ideas for making a more joyful world all round.
What inspired you to become an artist?
Maybe it’s corny, but my mum hugely inspired me to find art and to play in it from a young age. I was always encouraged to draw and paint, covering our little flat in pictures of made-up characters and monsters. And later on, I wasn’t discouraged from pursuing arts as a career. A real turning point was when I got the chance to work with (the now sadly defunct) London Word Festival. I saw performances that changed my life. Like, poetry didn’t have to be this stilted thing on the page. It could be cool, and contemporary, and weird. That started the shift towards bringing games and text together. As much as I loved the performances I was seeing, I’m not very good at performing myself. Games felt like a way to create these little performances which people could insert themselves into as the performer.
Are there any defining moments of your life that have led you to where you and your practice are now?
The London Word Festival was huge, particularly the work of Ross Sutherland, an incredible writer and performer. From there I found that I really loved producing for other artists – stage shows, exhibitions, tours, that sort of thing. It feels like a wonderful form of collaboration and seeing people’s work flourish is a particular kind of joy. I’ve met amazing people over the last few years who have inspired and encouraged me to continue pushing my own practice into new places. I think this is the main thing that keeps me striving to be a capital ‘A’ Artist, meeting and learning from incredible people. I was lucky enough to meet Sophie Sampson and Holly Gramazio, two of the co-founders of Now Play This festival, in 2018 who have been huge inspirations ever since. They introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about games and play, which has been a solid part of my practice ever since.
“As much as spectacular art is great, I think we need more intimate moments. More sharing. More solidarity. More play.”
You refer to ‘place-making’ and democratising gameplay/mechanics, what does this mean to you and how does this inform and appear in your work?
In terms of place-making, think games are an amazing way of giving people a sense of agency within a space. If a group of people can be comfortable enough with each other and those around them to play a game – you know, something simple like Stuck in the Mud – in a public space, it’s a hugely powerful thing. All of a sudden, those people have a level of ownership over the space around them. I think this is essential for understanding how we all interact as a society, and as the communities that make up that society. Through my work, I try to introduce gentle ways to get people to think about their surroundings playfully, and through games create an individual sense of place. Our environment makes us as much as we make it, and I think we all need a playful reminder of that.
In terms of democratising gameplay mechanics, I think everyone can play or be playful, but often games aren’t set up to allow for that. Take for example a standard game controller, it’s got twenty-odd buttons. That’s just not conducive to getting people to play. There’s a huge barrier around game literacy that isn’t often thought about. I try to remove those barriers in every piece I make. Play doesn’t (always) need complex systems or impenetrable rules. At the end of the day, a game is just a rule we enforce on ourselves to make something a bit more awkward, because that’s fun. Boiling it all down to that and starting from there is a good way to bring new players and audiences into the mix. I want to hear everyone’s voice on the playground!
What do you plan on working on in your studio?
A lot of my recent work has been centred around the River Brent and its tributaries. Barham Park isn’t far from two more tributaries of the Brent, and so I’m keen to explore the area using these waterways as a focal point. I like to bring walking into my work, so I’m hoping to invite local folks for some communal walking and talking.
I have some smaller works that all hint at a larger piece and a larger narrative world. Now that I’ve got the space I think I’ll spend some time exploring that too!
What would be your dream project if you had unlimited resources?
My ultimate joy is working with other people, so I think if I had unlimited resources I’d create a community space and art arcade. I love the idea of providing a place for people to share their experiences, make things, play games. As much as spectacular art is great, I think we need more intimate moments. More sharing. More solidarity. More play.
