Ceidra Moon Murphy
Buffer
7 October–18 November 2023
Opening: Friday 6 October, 4–8 pm


A pre-event buffer is a segment of footage preceding an event. Contiguous and discreet, it presupposes a hierarchy of information. It is the blocking to the performance. It comes before the law.

Axon police body cameras are programmed with a default pre-event buffer which records 30 seconds of video without the audio component. The buffer activates only when the ‘event’ button is pushed. Against the veracity of the image, as it is framed by manufacturer and public policy alike, this silent margin is the germ of doubt. ‘What does truth look like?’, asks the narrator of an Axon corporate teaser.

a. SQUIRE is pleased to announce Buffer, the debut solo exhibition of Ceidra Moon Murphy and the first show at the gallery’s permanent location at 3 Princeton Street.

Ceidra Moon Murphy investigates data losses as procedures and instruments. Her work amplifies the leaden qualities of implicated objects, locating in them narratives that belie their inert exteriors and render brittle their material conditions. The exhibition is comprised of three works—each one an image of absence—and accompanied by a new essay written by the artist.

‍Video is a facsimile 1-1 bronze cast of an Axon 6-bay bodycam charging dock. The dock automatically downloads footage when a camera is connected. Its tangled cable lies to the side.

Mounted opposite, Still Life is an iterative sculpture consisting of unclaimed property boxes disposed of by the Ministry of Justice. Their identifiers redacted and their contents sealed in potential, the boxes hold and withhold the possessions of individuals subjected to incarceration.

The third work, Jerusalem, is a photograph of a waiting area at the former National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. It was taken whilst the contents of the building, located on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were being transferred to a new site by Herzog & de Meuron between the Knesset and the Israel Museum. Among its collection are 30,000 Palestinian books appropriated under the Custodian of Absentee Property law. The library reopens this Autumn.


Ceidra Moon Murphy (b. 1998, London) received a BA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. In January 2023, she completed a residency in association with Riwaq, Ramallah; and The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit. She lives and works in London.

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