Tom Murray – The Conversation

Photograph by Robert Walker, Eric Smith in the studio, c.1973 black and white photograph, 52cmx42cm. Barbara Smith Collection. Used with permission.

June 18, 2025

Artist Eric Smith won 3 Archibalds, then vanished. A new show reveals his unseen works

Tom Murray, Macquarie University

The major retrospective – the first to be held since Eric Smith’s death in 2017 – includes his earlier religious works, as well as later abstract masterpieces.

Rupert O’Flynn with Rudolf Marcuse’s bronze bust of Douglas Grant, December 2016. Photograph courtesy Tom Murray.

June 4, 2019

How we tracked down the only known sculpture of a WWI Indigenous soldier

Tom Murray, Macquarie University and Hilary Howes, Australian National University

In 1918, in Wünsdorf prisoner-of-war camp, a German sculptor created a bust of Indigenous soldier Douglas Grant. For decades, the whereabouts of this nationally significant sculpture were unknown - until now.

An 1894 image of Lambton fighting the worm from the book More English Fairy Tales. Wikimedia Commons

July 16, 2018

From dragons to dreaming serpents: tracing the cultural history of the monstrous Lambton Worm

Tom Murray, Macquarie University

A monstrous worm that features in English mythology shares remarkable similarities with the watery serpents of Indigenous stories.

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