Brett Murray is a South African artist known primarily for his satirically incisive sculptures and ‘The Spear’, a wildly infamous portrait of the nation’s past president, Jacob Zuma. His work functions as an introspective stock-take on the artist’s positionality within the social climate of South Africa at a particular moment, with which he aims to entertain. ‘In reflecting on what is unfolding,’ Murray comments, ‘I hope to articulate a very personal understanding and an idiosyncratic psychological sense of place, and begin to describe who I am with this anomalous vision. Paradoxically, through this critique and comic exposure, I actually begin to define a preferred ideal in which I would like to live.’ 

Spanning bronze, steel, plastics, print, video and marble, Murray’s award-winning work grapples with the wars of cultures, the clash between Afro- and Eurocentrism, the old and the new South Africas, identity politics and the ways in which political discussions have been shaped for the worse by social media. 

Brett Murray’s ambition throughout his long career has been to speak truth to power. Satire as a tool for political debate has always been a cornerstone of his practice. Brett Murray studied at the University of Cape Town, where he was awarded his Master’s of Fine Arts degree in 1988 with distinction. The title of his dissertation was ‘A Group of Satirical Sculptures Examining Social and Political Paradoxes in the South African Context’. His work since has been an introspective stocktake on the artist’s positionality within the social climate of South Africa and the world at particularly troubling moments in time.

As an undergraduate, Murray won Irma Stern Scholarships in both 1981 and 1982. He won the Simon Gerson Prize for the most Promising student in 1982 and was awarded the Michaelis Prize in 1983. As a postgraduate student he received a Human Sciences Research Council bursary, a University of Cape Town Research Scholarship, the Jules Kramer Grant and an Irma Stern Scholarship. In 2002 he was the winner of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2002. 

From 1991 to 1994 he established the sculpture department at the University of Stellenbosch, where he curated the show ‘Thirty Sculptors from the Western Cape’ in 1992. In 1995 he curated, with Kevin Brand, ‘Scurvy’, at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. That year he co-curated ‘Junge Kunst Aus Zud Afrika’ for the Hänel Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1999, Brett co-founded, with artists and cultural practitioners Lisa Brice, Kevin Brand, Bruce Gordon, Andrew Putter, Sue Williamson, Robert Weinek and Lizza Littlewort, ‘Public Eye’, a Section 27 company that manage and initiate art projects in the public arena with the aims to develop a greater profile for public art in Cape Town. They initiated projects on Robben Island; worked with the city’s health officials on AIDS awareness campaigns; and initiated outdoor sculpture projects including ‘The Spier Sculpture Biennale’. He curated ‘Homeport’ in 2001, which saw 15 artists create site specific text based works in Cape Town’s Waterfront precinct. 

Murray was included on the Cuban Biennial of 1994, and subsequently his works where exhibited at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Germany. He was included on the group show, ‘Springtime in Chile’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile. He was also part of the travelling show ‘Liberated Voices, Contemporary Art From South Africa’ which opened at the Museum for African Art in New York in 1998. He won the Cape Town Urban Art competition in 1998 that resulted in the public work ‘Africa’, a 3.5 metre bronze sculpture, being erected in Cape Town’s city centre.

Murray won, with Stefaans Samcuia, the commission to produce an 8 x 30 metre wall sculpture for the foyer of the Cape Town International Convention Centre in 2003. In 2007 he completed ‘Specimens’, a large wall sculpture for the University of Cape Town’s medical school campus. In 2011 he produced the public artwork ‘Seeds’ for the University of Bloemfontein and in 2013 he was commissioned to produce the 7 metre bronze ‘Citizen’ for the Auto & General Park in Johannesburg. In 2025 Murray was a recipient of the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust Award. This generous award acknowledges exceptional achievement in the field of sculpture by a South African artist. Later the same year in November Murray opened his major retrospective WILD LIFE at The Norval Foundation in Cape Town South Africa, showcasing a review of almost 40 years of his sculptural practice