Judith Alder – Finding Her Way
Part 4
Revealing the inside on the outside is a theme Judith began during her early art training when she started to investigate the human body. In Body Texts she wrote people’s inner thoughts on the outer skin of a body; she made paper casts of body parts onto which inner juices appeared to seep out. She made books in which she displayed collected secrets and ‘things not said’. The Spectacular Bodies exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London 2000 was of great interest and influence. In the catalogue from this show I look at the raw emotion shown in Bernini’s Anima Dannata (Condemned Soul) 17th Century and in Marc Quinn’s Emotional Detox from the Seven Deadly Sins 1994/5 and although Judith’s work is less openly emotional, I sense her search for the source of feelings via her body explorations and her experiments.
After completing her Honours Degree in 2003 Judith set up Blue Monkey Studio with 3 other graduates. Her first project ‘Short Lives’ was intensely personal. Both her parents had died in the previous two years. She chose to continue to experiment with and to document the growing of beans and peas in petrie dishes. She told me she wishes to give time to make sense of the death of her parents and to mark their loss. The opportunity to display this work at Stroud House Gallery, Gloucestershire brought this work to a successful conclusion.
Judith is continuing her investigation of outer and inner spaces and she has been reading the journal of Christopher Columbus. She sees herself as an explorer, walking unknown lands. She makes fictional journeys through real and created landscapes in order to explore the territory both outside and inside our worlds. I wonder what she will discover.
My own investigation of Judith’s work, a journey through her years as an artist, shows me that Judith is well on her way, walking purposefully down the roads she chooses. She opens to what she sees around her, sometimes decides to branch out and try a new path. Clearly she finds plenty to interest herself and us on her way.
The complete article can be downloaded from: www.roz2.co.uk/news.html
