Robert Murray, Chilcotin, 1969
Robert Murray, Chilcotin, 1969, painted Q-decking, 182.9 x 458.5 x 298.5 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1974 (18135). Photo credit: National Gallery of Canada.
From afar, Chilcotin, 1969, resembles a table, but in fact it is six feet tall. “It’s a piece which has to be experienced,” says Murray. “There is a kind of Alice-In-Wonderland quality. It has the appearance of a table as you walk up to it, but by the time you’ve got there this literalness disappears and you almost feel you are shrinking.” Murray used Q-decking to create an expansive horizontal surface supported at one by a sawhorse leg and L-shaped bridge and by two post supports at the opposite end. A work whose scale plays with our visual perception, the sculpture is notable for its ever-changing colour, which ranges from lemon yellow to orange yellow depending on how the light falls on its surfaces.
Gallery
Painted steel, 243.8 cm, Collection of City Hall, Saskatoon. Photo credit: Robert Murray.
Robert Murray, Ferus, 1963, painted steel, 360.8 x 111 x 56 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1999 (40049). Photo credit: Robert Murray.
Left to right: Robert Murray, Marker, 1964, painted steel, 220.8 x 53.5 x 88 cm, Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966 (66.3708); Robert Murray, Montauk, 1964, painted steel, 274.3 cm high, location unknown; Robert Murray, TO, 1963, painted aluminum, planar column 275 cm high, tubular column 271.1 cm high, Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Gift from the Junior Women’s Committee Fund, 1966, 65/60.1-.2. © Robert Murray; Robert Murray, Adam and Eve, 1962–63, bronze, 109.1 x 16 x 15 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1970 (16622). © Robert Murray; Robert Murray, Chief, 1964, painted steel, 231.4 cm high, Collection of Frank Stella. Photograph by Robert Murray.