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Irish artist Clive Murphy creates installations and sculptures that deal with – in his words — site and surface. From his site specific inflatable installations – made from duct-taped black garbage bags filled with air by electric fans – to his DIWIF (Demonic Intervention With Ikea Furniture) series and smaller sculptures, Murphy tends to work in a lo-fi manner embracing low-brow culture.

I am especially a fan of his DIWIF (Demonic Intervention With Ikea Furniture) sculpture. The monstrous-like work would make anyone smile who has attempted to put together the infamous flat-packed furniture. The sculpture comes complete with Murphy’s humorous diagrammed instructions on how to assemble.

From Murphy:
‘In my work I’m constantly interested in examining the peripheral, insignificant and sometimes seemingly ridiculous as a means of illustrating a sense of interconnectivity and also rebutting certain hierarchical value systems, so in this context building an architecturally orientated inflatable from plastic seems appropriate.’

From top to bottom: Almost Nothing, site specific inflatable structure at the Soap Factory, Minneapolis; MONO, site specific kinetic inflatable single tube sculpture, Pallas Contemporary Projects, Dublin; Inflatable Trash Bag Cube, MagnanMetz Gallery; Pneutopia, Inflatable Bouncy Castle, MagnanMetz Gallery; Inflatable Box Series x2; DIWIF (Demonic Intervention With Ikea Furniture) complete with instructions by the artist, MagnanMetz; Neon Toaster; Untitled (Ice Sculpture). Photos courtesy of Pallas Projects, the Soap Factory, and MagnanMetz Gallery.