Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce ‘Principal Boy’, the first solo exhibition by Maz Murray, an artist filmmaker based in London and Basildon. Murray uses satire, surrealism, melodrama, and humour to talk about queer and trans identity, class, and the complexities of public life. They repurpose and subvert pop cultural tropes such as music video, TV documentary, talk show, social media content and cinema. This exhibition, part of FPG x Jerwood Presents, is made possible by a Jerwood Foundation grant, which has been awarded to Focal Point Gallery for 2024–25.
The exhibition will include newly commissioned and recent work ranging from film to sculpture and installation. The focus of the exhibition is a new work titled Principal Boy, a film that follows the audition, rehearsal, and performance of the central character in British pantomime, known as the ‘principal boy’. Traditionally a young male protagonist, the character is conventionally played by a woman in drag. Murray’s satirical, comedic, and melodramatic take on the pantomime casting process is shaped by, in their own words, “the tropes of a showbiz satire vibes but applied to the naffness of English showbiz”. Drawing inspiration from cinema classics centred around theatre and the stage – such as 42nd Street, All That Jazz, Showgirls, Hail The New Puritan, and The Boyfriend – Principal Boy uses and subverts traditional British pantomime conventions to explore the presence and absence of trans and gender-nonconforming people in mainstream culture, including film and stage productions.
The exhibition also marks the debut presentation of the film work Thigh Rise, 2023. The films will be shown alongside existing works, integrated into a new immersive installation looking at the theatricality of fabricated spaces, from stage sets to new towns. Spanning sets, props, and moving image works, the installation will use light as a key element to guide the visitor along multiple paths set out in the gallery. In the installation, as in their work, Murray aims to draw parallels between the right to roam and the right to self-expression by exploring journeys across time and place – from country to town to suburb to city – and the enclosure of ‘othered’ identities.

Southend-on-Sea

United Kingdom

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Time:	Mar 27–Jun 15, 2024 (UTC) ENDED
Location:	The Forum

Maz Murray. Principal Boy | Southend-on-Sea

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