Tauranga Art Gallery - Toi Tauranga

Throw Up! - 15 Mar 2010

Judy Darragh has been working as an artist since the 1980s, a time of over indulgence and consumerism. Her elaborate use of tacky, colourful materials in her work, both ready made and utilitarian, were used to draw attention to our over-stuffed lives at the time, and rapidly earned her the reputation of the ‘Queen of Kitsch’.

Although the title has long since been abandoned, Darragh’s style is still flamboyant.

In her latest installation at Tauranga Art Gallery, Throw Up, Darragh has treated the large walls of the Atrium as blank canvases to which, as the title suggests, she has attached a myriad of objects.

In Darragh’s words, to ‘throw in the towel, throw the book at, throw the baby out with the bath water, or to throw one’s weight around’ alludes to energy and action.

Although this hints at a rather light hearted or flippant approach, Darragh calls upon the tradition of 17^th century Dutch still-life painting where the choice and arrangement of elements is integral to the composition.

In Throw Up, you will see vinyl records, ping-pong balls painted fluorescent pink, cloud-like chunks of polystyrene painted fluorescent green and silicone squeezed into spaghetti-like lines, with each material taking on a new life, disguising its former existence. However Darragh’s palette is limited to silver, black and fluorescents, creating an order and balance while retaining its flamboyance and surprise.

Darragh’s work can also be considered to be very much about how she works and the physical placement of objects. In Throw Up she has decided not to cover entire walls but rather work to her reach – as far as she can reach with outstretched arm and hammer. This is deliberate to embrace the nuance of ‘working within my reach’. The use of the metaphor ‘reaching out’, ‘beyond reach’ and ‘dry-reaching’ all spring to mind and sit well with the notion of Throw Up. Ultimately Throw Up will look like a massive weighty tide-mark around the gallery walls.

As Gallery Manager Penelope Jackson suggests, working on this scale has meant an enormous amount of time to collect, and colour the objects. “The plastic bottles that fill the window have been painted inside, to emulate the act of mixing paint in a container as well as the storage of paint. Judy’s Auckland studio is an emporium, and Throw Up is a celebration of her two decades of practice.”

Darragh’s summation of Throw Up is apt, “the work is viral, it grows and blooms.”

Throw Up can be viewed at Tauranga Art Gallery from 12 March until 6 June.

Judy Darragh will give a floortalk on Throw Up at 11am, Saturday 13 March. Art writer Tessa Laird will also present a floortalk on the installation at 1pm, Saturday 10 April.