Gerry Judah (b.1951)

BIOGRAPHY

Gerry Judah is an internationally leading established contemporary artist. Visually forceful and sensitively crafted, Judah’s poetic works engage with pressing geopolitical issues of conflict and climate change, while remaining deeply personal. Judah has previously worked in film, television and theatre, creating settings for the BBC, Royal Shakespeare Company, and Paul McCartney amongst many others. His spatial sensibility can still be felt in the dramatic, emotive and physical scale of his recent artworks, which operate on a captivating boundary between painting, architecture and sculpture.

‘Ruins hide things. Not just the memory of what they were, but the memories they still contain’ - on Gerry Judah,

Judah artfully documents destruction by creating artworks that both viscerally engage with the stark realities of war and evoke the ephemeral traces of traumas left in its wake. Judah’s ‘dystopian maquettes’ are made with the inevitability that they will be destroyed. With acrylic gesso on canvas, glue and foam board, the artist meticulously composes architectural representations of sites that have become metonymic of past and present conflict, before physically smashing them, leaving behind an abstract detritus of ruined buildings. Through re-appropriating media images of war-torn cities, from Beirut to , Judah’s works self- consciously disrupt the apathy and voyeurism that too often comprise our response to destruction. They make physically present the ‘landscapes of loss’ with which we have become disturbingly familiar. The shattered fragments and spikes that form his painterly work make palpable the personal, whilst lending emotive weight to the collective narratives deeply embedded in the canvas. As Judah suggests, ‘It is the duty of culture to reach further than just the walls it sits on. It mustn’t be parochial, but rather stretch beyond items of war.’

In his recent Bengal series, Judah turns his attention to the slow devastation wrought by climate change in , the country in which he was born and grew up. As in his earlier works, Judah’s engrossing visual spectacles encourage viewers to engage with the complex, the almost unapproachable; the histories of growth and loss, tradition and modernization that are layered in the country. In his exquisitely detailed sculptures, the structures of temples, electricity pylons and religious artifacts are precariously balanced on rickshaws, a mode of transport that has come to symbolize India’s ingenuity and urban dynamism. Constructed in part from coal and ash, they performatively enact the environmental burden of human industry, while also representing communities’ inherently creative capacity to recycle, to move forward.

‘These intricate, fragile and colourful works reflect the beauty of India amongst its degradation’ - Jane Morrow, Curator Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Gerry Judah was born in Calcutta, India, in 1951 and currently lives and works in , UK. He has a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths (1972-75) and a Mphil in Sculpture from Slade School of Fine Art (1975-77). Among many major shows he has exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1977), Camden Arts Centre (1978), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1979), David Roberts Foundation (2007), Louise T Blouin Foundation (2007), Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2009), St www.encountercontemporary.com [email protected]

Paul’s Cathedral (2014) and the (2015).

Gerry Judah's work is in many international private and public collections including, Collection, London, UK, Aditya and Megha Mittal, London, UK, David Roberts Foundation, London, UK, Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, London, UK, Eskander and Fatima Maleki, London, UK, , UK, Imperial War , London, UK.

www.encountercontemporary.com [email protected]

CURRICULUM VITAE

Born in 1951, Calcutta, India Lives and works in London, UK

EDUCATION

1975–1977 - MPhil, Sculpture; Slade School of Fine Art, UCL 1972–1975 - BA, Fine Art; Goldsmiths College, University of London

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2016 - Fragile Lands, Encounter Contemporary, Westbourne Grove, London UK 2015 - Fragile Lands, Encounter Contemporary, Copeland Gallery, London UK 2014 - Great War Sculptures, St Paul’s Cathedral, London, UK 2010 - The Crusader, , Manchester, UK 2010 - Country, Fitzroy Gallery, New York, USA 2009 - Babylon, Flowers East Gallery, London, UK 2009 - Country, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, UK 2007 - Motherlands, Louise T Blouin Foundation, London, UK 2007 - Angels, British High Commission, Delhi, India 2006 - Angels, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK 2005 - Frontiers, Timber Yard, London, UK

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2015 - Dead: the celebration of mortality, Saatchi Gallery, UK 2013 - Tipping Point with Simon Starling, Darren Almond, , Heather and Ivan Morison, Katie Paterson, Lori Nix, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK 2010 - Perspectives, Hyatt Regency, London, UK 2009 - Small is Beautiful, Flowers East Gallery, London, UK 2009 - Meltdown, Flowers East Gallery, London, UK 2009 - Metro-Land, Merriscourt Gallery, Oxford, UK 2008 - Concrete and Glass, Shoreditch Town Hall, London, UK 2008 - Art and Architecture, Belgravia Gallery, London, UK 2007 - Mediteraneo, Italian Cultural Institute, London, UK 2007 - David Roberts Foundation Inaugural Exhibition with Anselm Kiefer, Anthony Gormley, Boyle Family, Hyungkoo Lee, One One One Gallery, London, UK 2007 - Avatar of Sacred Discontent, Hillgate Gallery, London, UK 1979 - Wood, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK 1978 – Succah, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK 1977 – Group Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK

COMMISSIONS

2015 - Mazda, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2014 - St Paul’s Cathedral, London, UK 2014 - Mercedes Benz, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2013 - The Coca–Cola Company, burn Yard, Budapest, Hungary www.encountercontemporary.com [email protected]

2013 - Porsche, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2012 - Lotus, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2012 - BT ArtBox, Tower of London, UK 2012 - Red Knight, St Mary Brookfield, London, UK 2011 - Jaguar, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2010 - , Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2009 - , Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2008 - , Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2007 - , Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2005 - Honda, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2004 - Rolls Royce, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2003 - Ford, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2002 - , Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2001 - Mercedes-Benz, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2000 - Atrium Sculpture, Sterling Square, London, UK 2000 - Jaguar, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK 2000 - Sustrans and London Borough of Greenwich, Linkbridge, Woolwich Dockyard, London, UK 1999 - Audi, Goodwood Festival of Speed, UK

SELECTED PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Charles Saatchi Collection, London, UK Aditya and Megha Mittal, London, UK David Roberts Foundation, London, UK Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, London, UK Eskander and Fatima Maleki, London, UK David and Francoise Winton, London, UK The Earl of March, Goodwood, UK Roger and Susan Walters, London, UK Chris Drake, Sussex, UK Zaza Jabre, Beirut, Lebanon Gilad and Cheryl Hayeem, New York, USA Irena Hochman, New York, USA Bobby Kapoor, Delhi, India Joe Blum, London, UK Richard Harrington MP, London, UK Dennis Krings-Ernst, London, UK Dipak Tanna, London, UK

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Arts Council England, UK Imperial War Museum, London, UK Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK Centre for Arts, Tel-Aviv,

www.encountercontemporary.com [email protected]