The Exchange
Mollie Murphy
“I love the Museum and I also love the Dollar Store. I take pictures and buy things in both places and I am fascinated by how we shape our identities through the material culture we find there.
I see the Dollar Store and the Museum as two sides to a very complicated coin. The obvious comparison can be: everything in the dollar store costs one dollar and everything in the museum is priceless. But my photographs and my display aim to reveal the complexities of the common and uncommon ground between the two.
Museums can be about collecting, empire, affluence, and culture.
Dollar stores can be about class, aspiration, hope, and desperation.
When I bump them up next to each other, strange and exciting things start to happen. In the resulting mashups, objects bounce off each other, both in form and content.
Both object and image worlds can be overtly and covertly political, inflammatory, and hilarious.
Both realms can be training grounds or traps for specific social groups. I think we learn so much about where we came from and who we are from these incredibly rich cultural sites.
Our fears and desires reside in each place.”
–Mollie Murphy
About Mollie Murphy
Mollie Murphy received a BA in English Literature from George Mason University and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. Solo and group exhibition venues include Mixed Greens Gallery, NYC; The Arts Council of Princeton, NJ; the Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; CollectiCo Gallery, NYC; Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY; City Without Walls, Newark, NJ; The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ; Phoenix Gallery, NYC; apexart, NYC; and 301 Gallery, Beverly, MA. She has been awarded residencies at Cowhouse Studios in Wexford, Ireland, the Vermont Studio Center, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and Kansas City Art Institute. She lives and works in Princeton, NJ.
For more information or to schedule a visit to see inside the exhibit, please contact Mollie at ejam.two@verizon.net or visit her website at http://www.molliemurphy.com/ She may also be followed on Instagram.
