Artist Profile

Viki Murray was born and raised in coastal Victoria. In her early teens she discovered photography and saved enough to buy her first SLR camera.

Photography became a focus at secondary school which led her to begin a Media Arts degree at Phillip Institute, Melbourne. Whilst at Phillip, she gravitated to stills over film and was drawn to black and white printing with a focus on landscapes and portraiture.

Her studies were put aside as the desire to travel became a priority and on her return to Australia from a Sth East Asian adventure, life took an entirely different path.

Whilst visiting Lightning Ridge in 1989, still on a mission to explore the world with a camera, a very persuasive individual won her heart and she found herself living in an eccentric mining town 800 kms from the beach.

This individual was the gifted artist John Murray, who encouraged her love of photography and soon she was printing black and white images in her own darkroom. In 1992; after a creative trip to the Torres Strait Islands, the pair opened John Murray Art Gallery and Viki's crusty character studies and landscapes featured alongside John's paintings.

For some years she explored the weird, eclectic world of the Lightning Ridge opal fields through the lens, capturing the off beat architecture and characters that make it so unique. The interest in her black and white shots of locals saw her expand into commissioned portrait work, all done with an emphasis on natural lighting with a very casual rustic approach.

With the opportunity to travel to various outback and overseas places, her work has been varied in subject and style at different stages. Such images have been exhibited solo as well as in collaboration with John.

As the gallery evolved and local tourism prospered, her role in the gallery shifted towards management, sales and administration. Although no longer working in the darkroom, her skills continued to expand as digital photography developed. Producing an expanding range of reproductions in the form of prints, cards and annual calendars involved shooting and formatting high quality images of John Murray's paintings for digital printing. This process provided a steep learning curve which has helped her images evolve and improve with the growing technology.

A trip to India in 2008 coincided with the opportunity to step back from the daily commitment of manning the gallery 9-5. Since then she has thrown herself back into creativity, producing a self published work on John's recent works and a couple of short childrens books with narrative and photography. Re-inspired by her local environment, she is working on a range of digital prints of the opal fields and constantly out and about with her camera.

Viki has a permanent display of images in the gallery and is currently working on new publishing projects. Her work can be viewed online at www.johnmurrayart.com.au andwww.redbubble.com.au