"If I trace it back, I think my interest in glass actually began with an interest in magnification, in lenses.  For a while I was obsessed with SEM (scanning electron microscope) images - those black and white high definition images of insects, and pollen grains, and other subjects."

"The sheet glass I use is also handmade, or I should say, 'mouth-blown', and retains traces and marks of its making: bubbles and 'seeds', swirls and more or less tinted areas, as well as varying in thickness over the sheet.  Revealed in light, all of these characteristics subtly modify and complicate the 'image' that's projected, that's a real pleasure to see.  There is also a quality that seems 'liquid' -  as if it retains something of its former state."

"The most figurative thing about this group of works is probably the mode of presentation - that they allow themselves to be read formally as 'windows'.   With the leaded ‘image’ - which is only one element in the work - I was mostly looking for simplicity, knowing that it would be complicated through interaction, through ‘opening’."

"These works need light, they crave it, and I’m interested in how changing the lighting conditions of a room reveals something of the materials. I want the work to make the most of its situation, to bask in the available light of a given space. There's no fixed or ideal condition, or rather, the ideal conditions are dynamic, so alteration and adjustment are to be encouraged."

"There's an  unfamiliar dialogue playing out with glass, in that the material is inherently itself already; the job I do is really only to present it - to make selections, cut it to size, judiciously place the parts."

"Glass also presents unique challenges with colour; some sheets appear to have nothing, no life, and then all of a sudden the sun hits them..."

Excerpts from an interview between David Murphy and Niklas von Bartha. Conducted over a series of emails and messages this interview explores the origins and significance of David Murphy’s latest Series of ‘Stained Glass’ works that will be exhibited at Bartha Contemporary this autumn.

For more details, visit the Bartha Contemporary Viewing Room here.