Bethany Murray is an artist, photographer and teacher whose practice is based on the body and the natural world.
She comes from the tradition of women artists using their body as a performative language in art. Her work began as a dancer, studying at London Contemporary Dance School, Dartington College and the School of New Dance. At an early age she delved into post-modern dance and the work of Pina Bausch, as well as the somatic work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Vanda Scaravelli.
Through performing in film and fine art she found her use of the camera and developed the performative photographic language that allows her pieces to be staged cinematically, using a process close to choreography. She creates fluid, changing narratives in which there is a return to the felt experience, to the body, and to a collective story.
Bethany’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in numerous fine art photography collections. She is based in the UK, raising her daughter, making new work and is in mentorship on the Continuum teacher path.
“When I discovered Continuum and met Emile Conrad in the US, the work quickly felt at home in me. There already seemed a knowing. Emilie looked into what was blocking me physically and I felt as if something was being seen. Meeting other Continuum practitioners and artists I have felt a mutual understanding and belonging, as we share a common language. Much of the creative process is inseparable from somatic understanding, from how we relate to our environment, through our own bodies and anatomies. Continuum can expand the bandwidth in our experience of place, and can open us up to how deeply we are interrelated to the natural world on a number of levels. If we can be creative from this place it brings a new dimension to both the field of art, to somatic practice and to those working to help the natural world.”
“Images come to me in dreams, which lead me to certain landscapes. I carry my photographic equipment to get to often hidden places. The performances that emerge in these landscapes become somatic rituals within the land and to how my body and its awareness encounters it. The rituals are performed to myself, to women’s stories and to the land itself. The photographs are all visual gestures to these moments.”
Bethany Murray is an artist, photographer and teacher whose practice is based on the body and the natural world.