This prize marks a step change in my practice – creating space to experiment with generating performances from written text, building skills for both ambitious solo and collaborative performance-making with local communities. Explore how performances can translate into stagecraft and moving image works. Generating new pieces of work that transform my practice from individual projects into a larger world building experience.
I would use the prize to fund research and development time focused on Speculative Fiction, specifically in relation to folklore. My goal is to create stories where Queerness and Transness are represented within ancient pre-capitalist frameworks, challenging modern- day conceptions of these identities as ‘new’ concepts. I plan to research local myths from Darlington and the North East of England (such as the Lambton Worm of County Durham) and use these myths as jumping points to develop new written works that could be performed live.
I would strengthen my skills and explore new practices in workshopping with collaborators, performance, and stage craft through mentoring and teaching sessions such as:
Attending the Guildhall’s Stanislavsky acting course (8 sessions: authentic, emotionally grounded ensemble training)
Focused writing with mentoring from Isabel Waidner (3 sessions on queer, surreal, politically charged fiction)
Mentoring sessions with Theatre writer and Director Tatenda Shamiso (3 sessions on creating devised theatre methodologies that relate to my practice)
Mentoring session with stage designer Claudia Casino ( 2 mentoring sessions)
I would further my research by continuing my interest of queer life outside of cities with a focus on Darlington’s queer community. I plan to invite local members to performance workshops where we can rehearse, develop work in progress drafts of my writing and make collaborative pieces. I would aim to create site specific performances inspired by local myths and stories. These performances would incorporate sets developed through both solo practice and community collaboration, integrating them into the environment. I would explore the possibilities of these performances becoming moving image works turning them into living archival works.
There is a clear difference between regional and metropolitan queerness, especially in how queer people outside of cities often lack access to spaces, resources, and inclusion in the modern, highly visible narrative of queer life. My work is interested in filling the gap where these spaces and stories are missing.
I’m interested in exploring my work through the lens of Darlington, where there’s a clear need for more LGBTQ spaces and cultural infrastructure, especially after the closure of the ‘Queerish Bookshop’ and limited regular events like LGBTQ film night ‘ Rainbow Screen’. Despite these limitations Darlington has an active LGBTQ+ community. Recently a coalition of activist groups including ,Disabled People Against Cuts and local trans groups organised a protest in Darlington’s Market Square against the supreme court GRC Ruling.
I also plan to revive and work with existing queer spaces like the Book Club from ‘Queerish Bookshop’ and integrate myself into the local activist artistic ecosystem through film screenings, book clubs, and work in progress performance collaboration sessions. The goal is to create a self sustaining and empowering knowledge exchange where experiences and creative strategies feed and enrich others.
I’m an artist working across moving images, writing and performance. My practice uses satire, surrealism and melodrama to explore queer and trans identity, class and the performance of public life. I’m interested in how constructed environments, from new towns and shopping centres to queer spaces and imagined utopias, shape identity, desire and belonging. I subvert pop cultural forms like pantomime, B movies, talk shows and social media, often blending humour with emotional and political intensity. My work is DIY, collaborative and rooted in queer and working-class perspectives. In 2024, I presented my first institutional solo exhibition Principal Boy at Focal Point Gallery, part of FPG x Jerwood Presents. The show included new and recent moving image, sculpture and installation. Its centrepiece, Principal Boy, explored the gender-variant hero of British pantomime through satire and showbiz melodrama. Thigh Rise (2023), a trans for trans love story set in a world where tower blocks are boots, was also included. It screened at the Irish Film Institute and featured on Girls in Film. My work has shown at ICA, Turner Contemporary and TOMA. I studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts (2017) and currently hold a Studio Voltaire Studio Award (2023–25). I’m now developing my first novel with Charlie Markbreiter, to be published by Montez Press.
I graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 2017 with a BA in Fine Art, where I developed my interest for satire, surrealism, and melodrama. For my degree show I created “Maz Vegas’, an installation/performance inspired by working class entertainment sites like nightclubs, bingo halls, the cabaret, betting shops, and the laser tag on an industrial estate. The name is a play on ‘Bas Vegas’, the colloquial name for an entertainment and leisure complex in Basildon, my home town. I also made “10000 BC’, a short film made for Channel 4’s ‘Random Acts’. Informed by radical anthropology (and Raquel Welch’s furkini in 1 Million Years BC) it follows a group of women taking part in a sex strike for meat. Satirizing binary men vs women sex wars politics with 60s epic cinema aesthetics, a queer romance, and a surprisingly easy resolution. It was created with a crew of women and LGBTQ+ people
Loewe Foundation/ Studio Voltaire Award Edition Three, Studio Voltaire, England, 2023- 2025
I have received multiple commissions as an artist from public institutions such a:
-The BFI Network, Short Film Fund (2022-23)
-‘Desperate Living’ Studio Voltaire (2020-2022)
-ICA Artist Film Commission (2018)
-Stop Play Record – short film commission in association with ICA, Channel 4 and Dazed & Confused (2016-2017)
My artwork has been reviewed in multiple publications and online curated platforms such as:
-Exhibition Reviews: ‘The Melodrama of Maz Murray’ by Juliet Jacques (Frieze)
-‘What I Saw Last Week” by Zarina Muhammad (The White Pube)
-‘Back to School: Maz Murray on Britney Spears, Showbiz, and Filmmaking’ by Christine Donoghue (ShowStudio)
-Laindon Review: ‘Lesbian Camp: Just livin’: Yes it’s F**king Political Shorts Programme’ by Cathy Brennan
-‘Finding Suburban Queerness in Essex’ by Martin Essemann (International Association of Art Critics)
I have been selected for multiple recognized residencies and artist placement programs, such as:
-Loewe Foundation/ Studio Voltaire Award Edition Three, Studio Voltaire, England, 2023- 2025
-Studio 459, Tomar, Portugal, 2023
-UKNA The Coast is Queer, Blackpool, 2021
-Metal Southend Remote Residency, 2021
-The Other MA x Southend Festival Artist Residency, Southend, 2018
-Estuary Fringe Festival Artist in Residence, Southend, 2017
-Panorama, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, 2015
Email: mazmurrayartist@gmail.com
Local Authority: Tower Hamlets
