Transitional/Transitive
I think there is use for a term for the root of symbolism in time, a term that describes
the infant's journey from the purely subjective to objectivity; and it seems to me that the transitional object is what we see of this journey of progress towards
experiencing. - W.D.Winnicott (1951)
This work takes as its point of departure the notion of the transitional object,
coined by Donald Winnicott, the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, to
designate the child’s first ‘non-me’ possession. It occupies the intermediate space
between the internal psychic world (subjectivity) and external reality – between
subject and object.
In this work, Murphy investigated questions of contradiction and paradox,
creativity and destructiveness. As befits the territory of pre-linguistic, embodied
experience under examination, materials are selected for their intuitive appeal as
texture, alongside their transitional, or in-between qualities. Some of the materials
are raw and unprocessed, and their achromatic quality and fragility allows them
to be subtle and suggestive, to hint that they are hovering between emerging and
fading, like the Cheshire cat’s grin.
Concerned with transition, transformation, and process, the work is not fixed, its
flexibility and mobility allow for change, transformation and reinterpretation. It can
never be installed in precisely the same way twice.
 Installation Shot |  Installation Shot |
|---|---|
 Installation Shot |  Of Containing |
 Of Containing (detail) |  Of Containing (detail) |
 Of Containing (detail) |  Of Ripping |
 Of Piercing |  Of Piercing (detail) |
 Of Piercing (detail) |  Of Fusing |
 Of Fusing (detail) |  Of Fusing (detail) |
 Of Fusing (detail) |  Of Fusing (detail) |
 Of Hanging (detail) |  Of Hanging (detail) |