John Murphy plays on the themes of sameness and difference - using existing materials such as reproductions, photos of old film and postcards. His works often evoke nostalgia, absence and sexuality, with exquisite subtlety and refinement. As Colette Dubois points out in a recent review in H.Art, "To these found elements, the artist sometimes associates a fragment of text; these few words, often part of the work, become its title. They produce a dialectical interplay in which association, interval and ellipsis - three typically cinematographic operations linked more particularly to montage - play a key role. What happens in the in-between of image and words - where meaning is created - is precisely what interests the artist. It's about a variable present. The artist sees each presentation as a new configuration of works, each of which then becomes a fragment of a new constellation: everything happens between the image and its title, the relationship to the other images/titles in a space that becomes a work in its turn".

John Murphy, born in 1945, lives and works in London. His personal exhibitions include: Selected works Jack Wendler Gallery London 1973, Selected works Museum of Modern Art Oxford 1975, Whitechapel Art Gallery London 1987-88, John Murphy Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol 1988, « John Murphy » Villa Arson, Nice 1997, « Acquisitions from the late 90s » Tate Britain, London 1998, « A Conversation pièce » with Juliao Sarmento, Museum of Modern Art Oxford 1998, « The Way up and the Way down » Southampton City Art Gallery and Museum, Southamptom 1999, « And things throw Light of Things » Ikon Gallery and Barber Institute, Birmingham, 2004-05, « Up or Down it’s All the Same; in Ghent or Venice » Het Kabinet , Gent 2005, Kunstmuseum Trondheim en 2013, Of Voyages, Of Others Places, Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Opéra Monde – La quête d’un art total, Centre Pompidou Metz 2019-2020, « Unreadiness » Roger Raveel Musem 2023, « History Tales. Fact and Fiction in History Painting », Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, 2023. Son travail figure dans de nombreux musées et collections internationales.