"But these photographs are not about novelty. They are about reserve and serenity and an understanding of that special intersection between uninhabited land and our modern cultivated world...... Through Murrell's deliberate and contemplative lens, we see a concern for the land and its history and an understanding of how the past nourishes the present."
From an article about "Twelve Months" by Joanna Pitman for the Times 2004.
"The influence of modernist painters such as Barnet Newman can be seen in the verticals and horizontals, while the photographic silvery-greys appear to dissolve like paint into tonal abstractions.... These still, perceptive works are not only celebrations of material and texture but also meditations on the physical world."
From an article about "Twelve Months" by Sue Hubbard for The Independent 2004
"There is not a sound to be heard. The music and the interval chatter have departed. There is not a person to found in these photographs, only the practical reality of maltings-turned-concert-hall: bare boards, bare bricks, nothing much to get your teeth into. But then light, the stuff of photographs, comes through a doorway and sunbeams and shadows cross and overlay into tones and half-tones and quarter tones and soon we are aware of a visual music being played wherever our eye is taken "
"Outside in the sun, a handrail photographed end on is explained only by it's shadow, broken by the fall of brick pavoired steps, regularly diminishing as they descend, away from the camera and away from us: a graphic score waiting to be played."
From an essay accompanying "Silence" Exhibition by Michael Harrison then Director of Kettle's Yard Gallery.