"New Paintings by Judy Millar"
2003-04-02 until 2003-04-26
Bartley Nees Project
Wellington, , NZ New Zealand (Aotearoa)

Bold, energetic and assertive paintings are what Judy Millar has become famous for, and this latest solo exhibition at the Bartley Nees Gallery is no exception. Judy Millar’s exhibition The brush moves this way, the brush moves that confirms her status as one of New Zealand’s most exciting and prominent abstract painters. In 2002 Millar won the Wallace Art Award with her large 3 x 2m painting Big Pink Shimmering One. She is the recipient of the Wallace Arts Trust Link Foundation Fellowship which will enable her to travel to the UK later this year.

Unlike the cool abstractions of many New Zealand artists, Millar’s current style is loose and gestural. As she explains, "I’m much more concerned with the sloppiness of the paint and the wetness of the surface than I am about how it’s looking. I don’t step back and look. So, it’s not about composition or any of those old rules, it’s actually about feeling my way across the surface. The direct relationship of the body is extremely important." (Judy Millar, quoted in Art News, Summer 2002, p.44).

Painting for Millar is fundamentally a process of unpainting: "These paintings are unpainted rather than painted, the paint is put on with a brush and then taken off. They are unworked rather than worked up. While I have been using rags to take the paint off, now I’m using my hands. It’s really an attempt to get as close as possible to that surface in a very physical and bodily way so I just use the side of my hand and wipe the paint away." (Judy Millar, floortalk, Bartley Nees Gallery, 2002).

Judy Millar has exhibited at the Bartley Nees Gallery since 1995.

IMAGE:
Judy Millar
Periodic Painting # 1
acrylic, oil and wax on gesso on canvas
2400 x 920 mm
2001

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for New Zealand

Other Important Exhibitions in Wellington