The View From Nowhere
Solo exhibition at Fold, London
13th Sept – 20th Oct 2018
Pale lilac, jade green, and a bruised blue resonate against yellow and incandescent orange in Judy Millar’s new paintings.
The colour palate is double-edged; reminding us of the moments when nature thrills us with sunsets, sunrises and deep blue lagoons but also recalling the colours of comic books and their depictions of outer space adventure and future doom. Millar, a fan of popular science, describes the activity of painting as a form of space travel.
“I used to think painting was a way of thinking. Now I know it to be much more than that. It is the flash of big-brain meeting small-brain, of consciousness meeting thought or of consciousness meeting mind through the body. Of outer space and inner space colliding.”
In this new group of works form becomes the graph of activity. The appearance of “things” emerges from the web of painted lines and fields of colour. Things hard to name but fleetingly apparent establish a semi-believable pictorial space. These strangely spatial paintings exude an otherworldly luminosity as if emitting light from a distant time and place.
As Millar applies then removes layers of paint from the surface of the works she seems to release energy as if an image has been held in matter and is now freed into visibility.