Artists Judy Millar
Judy Millarb.1957, New Zealand
Lives in Auckland and Berlin
Judy Millar is one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised artists. She shares her time between Auckland and Berlin and has a significant reputation in Europe, which continues to gain momentum.
Career highlights include two exhibitions at the Venice Bienniale (representing New Zealand with her solo exhibition Giraffe-Bottle-Gun, 2009; and in Time, Space, Existence a curated exhibition including new works by Carl Andre and Marina Abramovic, 2011); a major commission for Auckland Art Gallery, Rock Drop in 2017; exhibitions at Rohkunstbau, Berlin and Schloss Marquardt, Potsdam. Her first solo exhibition with Fold Gallery in London, The View From Nowhere opened in 2018. Judy Millar: The Future and the Past Perfect opened at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland in March 2019, with a survey of works from 1981 to 2018.
Broadly speaking Millar works from a within conceptual painting framework, in which she freely references painting’s recent histories, particularly delighting in plundering the expressiveness of gestural painting. Working with processes of erasure, wiping or scraping paint off the surface of the work, Millar takes up known positions only to deconstruct and question their previous meanings. In recent years Millar has used mechanically-generated enlargements of handmade gestures to challenge our expectations of the expressive gesture and of the efficacy of painting as a contemporary means of communication. In these works is a clear desire to grant painting the same power as all the other images that press upon us daily.
Gow Langsford Gallery has represented Judy Millar since the gallery began in 1987.
Education
1980 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
1983 Master of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
1991 Post Graduate Studies, undertaken at Academia Albertina - Turin, Italy
selected exhibitions
2022 Whipped Up World, Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington
2021 Clouds and Fire and Water and Air, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Judy Millar: Action Movie, City Gallery, Wellington
2020 2 in 1: Judy Millar and Alberto Garcia-Alvarez, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
2019 The Future and the Past Perfect, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland
A World Not Of Things, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
2018 Studies in Place, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
The View from Nowhere, Fold Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2017 – 2019 Rock Drop, South Atrium, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki, Auckland
2017 Swallowed in Space, Mark Mueller Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland
2016 Turning the World Inside Out: 30 Years A Painter, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Advancing All Electric, Galerie Mark Mueller “Tango Them Basel”- Zurich, Switzerland
The Bridegroom’s Voice, Bartley and Company, Wellington
2015 Proof of Heaven, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Movements towards Formation, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
The Model World, Te Uru Contemporary Galley, Auckland
2014 Cinema and Painting, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
2013 Comic Drop, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Images for Images; Artists for Tichy – Tichy for Artists, GASK, Gallery of Central Bohemia, Czech Republic