Judith Wright: Memory & Melancholy
Spanning over three decades, the evocative and multidisciplinary work of Queensland-based artist Judith Wright will be ubiquitous this year. Her multiple projects, and prominence at public institutions, attests to the levels of perception and heightened awareness present within her practice.
Image credit: Installation view Judith Wright, Covid Carnivale, 2020-21 Jan Manton Gallery, 2021. Courtesy the artist, Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane, Fox Jensen, Sydney & Fox Jensen McCrory, New Zealand and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne
After a year dominated by crippling lockdowns and restrictions that saw the cancellation or postponement of numerous exhibitions and events across the Australian arts firmament, the unflappable Judith Wright has pursued a schedule of projects that has defied the pandemic, fanning out across the country when she could not.
Wright’s work is inherently concerned with personal and collective memory, with how we negotiate life in terms of the weight of experiences we accumulate, our vulnerability and pathos. Her latest solo exhibition, Covid Carnivale at Jan Manton Gallery from February 10 to 18, 2021 is, in part, a response to the exigencies of the escalating global crisis, and the tragic toll it has exacted on countless lives. Many people had their idea of ‘reality’ profoundly distorted in 2020, and the covid-go-round of anxiety, frustration and suffering has seen a dramatic escalation of social and racial inequality in many countries. “I have used images of mouths, eyes, and noses (entry points for COVID-19). The ‘carnivale’ references are primarily about my childhood memories of the circus, and certainly there is a sense of the surreal,” Wright explains. “Whether or not I continue to be influenced by the traumas of the year I cannot predict ... probably not!”
From 1966 to 1970, Wright was a member of the Corps de Ballet of the Australian Ballet, but left when she was pregnant with her first child. “It was an easy decision for me, I had always wanted to make art also,” she admits. The ability to wordlessly communicate narrative, a strong sense of theatricality, repetition with ...Subscribe to read this article in full
