Judy Millar: Bo Do Be Do Be Do
Post-expressionist artist Judy Millar, who represented New Zealand in the 2009 Venice Biennale, has created site-specific painting installations for her show entitled Bo Do Be Do Be Do, at the Institute of Modern Art. The entire exhibition began as one very small painting, which was then turned into a black and white halftone dot image. That halftone image has been adhered to the floor in the second room of the gallery. All corresponding works, which are hand-painted on bendy plywood, are magnified sections of the halftone image; it is a repetition of itself in space and time.
Space and time connect our external and internal universes, and the way we measure time and space depends upon our self, through the instrument of the body. Our visual perception of time and of space depends on the manner and magnitude of their change and their scale in relation to our beings. The external universe is in a constant state of flux along with the system of the human body. The body interacts with the vastness of nature and space, and this interaction is reflected through the mind, both consciously and subconsciously.
Intentionally or unintentionally we focus on particular parts of the images that make up our universe. For example, it is not possible for our eyes to relay the entirety of a landscape or painting to our brain instantaneously, so we focus on particular parts. This fact was exaggerated by Matisse, as demonstrated through his Harmony in Red (1908), in which he creates the impression of space within the flatness of the colour red. The exaggerated two-dimensionality of the work forces the eye to move laterally as opposed to inter-dimensionally.
Millar takes