“Three Houses” is the outcome of an architectural design research project studying the effect of town planning and commodification on the shape of housing in Melbourne. These effects are exagerated at high densities, and the resulting dwellings are presented through “normal” real-estate renders. You can read more about the project here.

This project is one of two rennovations underway for the same client: one rennovated to sell, and one rennovated to occupy. The project includes a new pantry and wine cellar, restoration of original terrazzo flooring and hardwood flooring, and cabinetry that speaks back to the densely planted and well-loved garden. It is an ongoing reflection on the differences between design intended for the market, and design intended for the individual.

From design researcher Dr Laura Szyman, PhD (RMIT) (artist, designer), architect Bryn Murrell (programmer) and architect Jack Murray (producer, writer, sound designer), this rhythmic narrative game is inspired by folklore, river junctions, meeting places and myths that predate recorded history. Taking place in a world where magic is a vibrating and indescribable force, you are the first-ever wizard arriving at a strange village, uncovering your power through communion with a strange entity and building spells through “chords” – pressing a set of keys with precise timing. Images taken in-engine are a work in progress and not indicative of the final game art.

“Camera Lucida” is a participatory drawing machine which travlled to ‘zombie sites’ in Melbourne’s CBD and speculating on potential futures alongside the public. A zombie site is one where a building has received approval and demolition has occurred, but no new construction has emerged. Some of these boarded up voids in the city stay empty for up to 8 years before anything occurs beyond mowing the grass or taking out the bins.

We see these voids as construction sites ripe for speculation, engaging the public to use tactile drawing mechanisms to speculate on what might occupy these sites while they await their approved use. Perhaps it is a temporary park, a market, an artwork, a folly, a pavilion, a performance space, some zone of exception.

Documenting Space records the physical and cultural memory of the George Paton Gallery through the spatially sensitive approach of artist Anna Steele, architectural designer Jack Murray, interior designer Ellyn Faye and curator Gabrielle Bergman. The exhibition functions as an archival undertaking, and by doing so, expresses the way in which we engage in the space through various methods of documentation.
The concept of a ‘window’, referencing the pre-existing aperture at the front of the gallery that has since been plastered over, is an example of such a memory device as it forms part of the architecture that once existed during Rubbo’s time as gallery director. Concrete casting, moulds, projections, and installation works also offer alternative methods of documenting the physical and cultural history of the gallery.

Presented as part of the completion of a design research PhD by practice at the RMIT Design Hub Gallery. The screen, which loomed above the audience and exhibition-goers, shows delaminated afterimages of the PhD, suspended above artefacts produced over four years of research. This research uses these experimental images to reveal a condition that is largely invisible, but affects the development and morphology of metropolitan urban peripheries.

Set design for MU Modern’s 2022 production of Endgame by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Arthur Knight, asst. Daniel Holmes. With lighting design by Jacob Trethowan and Liam Wardlaw, with sound design by Cassidy Mason and set assistance from Andrea Garcia. 

In 2019, Jack Murray developed a standalone kinetic sculptural set piece for ‘The Lonely Crowd’. A devised production produced by Union House Theatre, ‘The Lonely Crowd’ combined original stories, images, dance and conversation. At times funny and at others deeply moving it explored ideas of loneliness in a truly crowded world. Directed by Xanthe Beesley with Emma Hall, stage management by Harriet Wallace-Mead and lighting design by Paul Lim (Additive Lighting).