Gerry Judah photographed in his studio by Dafydd Jones
Tonight Gerry Judah unveils a new body of work at the Louise T Blouin Foundation in north London. Eight white on white panoramic landscapes that challenge the boundary between painting and sculpture take their inspiration from images of war zones and the devastating impact the current conflict is having on the landscape of the Middle East and elsewhere. Dafydd Jones photographed Judah in his studio in Kentish Town as he was finishing the works for this new exhibition.
Judah creates delicate collages of desolated urban fabric. Scores of miniature buildings fixed onto the canvas are systematically destroyed by the artist to create a 'presence of absence'. Immaculately constructed and lacquered in layers of white acrylic gesso, his paintings are both environmentally and politically charged. Whilst this new body of work is a direct response to the Iraq War and recent events in Lebanon, Judah's landscapes of decimated settlements are intended to be generic, and not geographically specific. Judah's works explore the visual, emotional and physical effects of conflict in epic miniature.
For the last 20 years Gerry Judah has worked in production design. Three years ago he completed a series of paintings entitled 'Frontiers' which was exhibited in London in October 2005. Along with a number of private and public commissions, Judah was asked in 1998 by the Imperial War Museum, London to make a centrepiece focusing on Auschwitz Birkenau for their Holocaust exhibition which was opened in 2000. Visiting the concentration camp and researching extensive archives, Judah created a 12 x 2 metre model of the selection ramp with thousands of prisoners disembarking from trains for selection to slave labour or the gas chambers. This extraordinary artwork managed to convey, through attention to detail, a sense of the scale of the operation, and through silence, the magnitude of the inhumanity.
Gerry Judah
20 June-26 August
THE LOUISE T BLOUIN FOUNDATION
3 Olaf Street
London W11 4BE
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