Curatorial Statement | Artist's Résumé

While good taste is good, so is bad taste...

Forget about the angst of being an artist. Forget about wearing all that black. Lie back, relax, and let Judy Darragh do for the art world what Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Carson Kressley would describe as ‘joooshing’ it up a bit …

Darragh has always had an interest in using cheap, fun and accessible materials; from her artist’s shop The Blue Room in Grey Lynn (which in the late 80s sold weird and wonderful creations plundered from op shops and emporiums), to her crowning as the ‘Queen of Kitsch’ in the 1991 documentary Hair and her inclusion in Hangover – the pivotal touring exhibition of grunge art in 1995. This lends her work its particular edge, straddling the divide between low art and high art and celebrating the decorative arts, particularly craft and folk art.

Recent works have brought the vibrant world of fluorescent colour to the fore. Who knew fluoro could come in quite so many shades and on quite so many ordinary household products? In her work Dreamweaver, Darragh creates a cobweb from knotted-together fluorescent nylon. Transforming the mass-produced cord from a utilitarian material into a more organic substance, Dreamweaver sprawls across the window space and out into the gallery like an exuberant infection.

Emma Bugden