A Cast of Characters: Pia Murphy Brings Baroque Pearls to Life for Tidal Wave

Pia Murphy's work has long moved between printmaking, ceramics and oil painting, each medium bringing its own unpredictable chemistry and its own capacity for surprise.

In this conversation with Pieces of Eight, that same instinct for transformation shapes an unexpected new body of work for Tidal Wave: baroque pearls painted with enamel.

Balancing matte and gloss surfaces to build contrast and depth — without dulling the pearl's natural lustre — Pia Murphy approached each irregular form less as a surface to control, than as a character waiting to be drawn out. What emerged is a small cast of animate, cheeky beings — a green and white lemur with gold spots; a crouching skeleton; a watchful human eye — each pearl taking on a strange, sculptural life of its own.

PO8: Your practice has always been guided by what you can't control: the firing, the acid, the paint that arrives before the plan does. Does enamel on a pearl behave? Or did the surface resist you in interesting ways?

PM: The relationship between the enamel and the surface of the pearl was a slippery one and had me pondering how to achieve contrast and depth alongside the pearl lustre. I decided to utilise matt surface and transparent gloss layering to create a breadth of results. The challenge was to highlight the pearl, not try to emulate it.

PO8: You've moved across printmaking, ceramics, and oil painting, each a different conversation with surface, chemistry, and transformation. Where does enamel on a pearl sit in that lineage for you?

PM: The pearl shape inherently has character and form: it was about teasing out the story, the personality. It was similar to an abstract painting taking twists and turns, evolving into its own being.

PO8: You've described your ceramic work as embracing animate characters and cheeky, nebulous forms. Did a personality emerge in these pearls? What kind of creature did they become, house or converse with?

PM: Yes, they took on human/animal forms. A green and white Lemur type creature with gold spots, a crouching skeleton figure, shapes in red and green and a human eye on each pearl.

Tidal Wave is now showing at Pieces of Eight Gallery, 28 Russell Place, until August 29, 2026. Pia Murphy has created A Beautiful and Strange Otherness earrings and is also offering her Wintering Tree sculpture for purchase.