Since 2009, Lauren Judge has established a professional artistic practice where she develops bodies of work based in themes like ecofeminism. Her publication record includes guest columns in local newspapers, in-depth reports for organizations and municipalities, as well as articles in publications like Alternatives Journal (Judge, 2016). She’s been fortunate to have a wide-ranging career – as an online librarian, arts administrator, artist, office manager, editor, knowledge mobilizer, consultant, event planner – that has allowed her to flex her intellectual muscles. But as she works through a PhD she looks forward to contributing to the wealth of Canadian environmental scholarship and appeal to the sensibilities of the beholders of landscape to do what they can to protect it.
She is a creative geographer, combining her passions for art and her commitment to the environment. Her research investigates the artist's relationship to nature and co-creative practices.
As Guest Curator at Minds Eye Studio Art Gallery and Yoga Studio, I am pleased to present Lauren’s work at the gallery this month. Transformational Encounters is a solo exhibition of all new abstract paintings by Lauren Judge.
Artist statement:
There's a lesson to be learned from every relationship. Relationships are very important to me. We learn from each interaction. We get much needed physical and emotional affirmations. We feel security and support when we are surrounded by caring others. Relationship is the sharing of visions and the convergences of various forms of love, but it's also about collaboration and collective survival. Transformational Encounters is about transcending our human-to-human understanding of relationship and connection, and embracing the inclusion of, and the reciprocal care of non-humans in our connections. It is through relationships with non-humans that we will create a stronger world that can adapt and resist the environmental and social challenges coming our way.
Transformational Encounters provides a glimpse into the concepts and themes that have surfaced so far in my PhD research. I am inspired by the works of scholars like Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing and Arturo Escobar, and I'm especially taken with the concept of the pluriverse. The pluriverse is a geopolitical concept that understands our world as a network that connects peoples, and a need to collaborate for our collective survival. Our world consists of diverse people, cultures, ethnicities, ideas and knowledges. Seeing our world as a pluriverse is to respect our differences, while also acknowledging that we need each other, because there are many knowledges and ways of knowing the Earth.
In my research, I take the concept of the pluriverse a step further - our connections are not just between people, but also include non-humans. Because we live in a more-than-human world.
[There is a more detailed description of my research on my website, https://www.laurenjudge.com/research]
Transformational Encounters is on view until September 30. Private viewings are available and the artist reception will be held on Friday September 16th at 7:30 pm.
“Art is powerful enough to help people heal, and to bring people together. It is educational, and it makes us question how the world could be a better place. ”
What made you want to pursue a PhD?
When I finished my Masters in 2005, I knew I wasn't finished with grad school yet. There was still more I wanted to learn within the environmental humanities, but I wasn't sure of the topic. From 2009 onward, my professional career as an artist took off, and became increasingly interested in eco-based topics too. And then in 2017, after 12 years of working strictly in administrative roles and creating art separately, I decided it was time to go back to school and get my PhD in creative geography. I never fully felt at home in the administrative world, but I've always felt I belong in the post-secondary/academic world.
What is the most interesting or surprising thing you’ve discovered in your research?
I can't discuss all my findings yet, but a general theme that has surfaced is the importance of the artist's relationship with the natural world and the role of art in the co-creation of new relationships between humans and non-humans. I can't go into too much detail about this yet, but essentially artists - specifically artists working on the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula are co-creating with non-humans to produce pieces of art that help other humans to form relationships with, and responsibilities to, the natural world.
Transformational Encounters provides a glimpse into the concepts and themes that have surfaced so far in your PhD research. Can you expand on how the concepts and themes come through in the art? Is it in your colour choices, the organic shapes, the naming of the pieces, etc?
Keeping true to my aleoteric (a fancy word for random/unplanned) and intuitive approach to painting, the abstract lines and shapes are formed through movement. The outcome are these assemblages that resemble nests, or worlds within worlds, connected but independent. The assemblages are in relationship with each other, bonded, supportive, but also unique in their own composition. When I was creating - pouring the outlines, and intuitively adding colour - I was contemplating the themes that come from our navigation of relationships: learning, precarity, convergences, love, care.
The organic shapes and assemblages have shared palettes to represent material connectedness. The compositions and the names I've given to each should bring to the viewer's mind feelings, and the viewer should know that similar feelings came up in my research interviews, analysis, and my own experiences in the field.
Has your research changed your approach to art making?
Any research, or new knowledge, will always feed into my art making. And I've found this with my artist research participants too. We are impressionable, we are all influenced by what we read, by the communities we belong to, by our peers, politics, in/justices. The more I learn, the more I realize how powerful art can be, not just to bring people together, but to connect people to place, to non-humans, and how important art will be in shifting mindsets from human exceptionalism to a more-than-human world.
Do you see art as an accessible way to educate people about the need for collaboration for collective survival?
I do. Art is powerful enough to help people heal, and to bring people together. It is educational, and it makes us question how the world could be a better place. In my opinion, art is only successful if it is available, open, and easy to access for all people, because it needs an audience and there needs to be dialogue in order for a piece of art to have an impact. I think many people feel safe being an audience to visual art, and in many spaces visual art can allow a viewer to have choice in how they engage - typically the more public the better. I would be sad if I created all of this art, and no one talked about it. If someone is critical of a piece, I always think, "Well, at least they're talking about it."
And dialogue, in its various forms, is how we connect with others over art. It helps to uncover the ideas the artists are exploring. It helps to reveal the artist's creative process and their subject matter. Dialogue is an act of collaboration. It is how we will survive and become stronger together.
What is one thing that we can do now to improve our relationships with non-humans?
We need to begin seeing and engaging with non-humans as our relations. We need to acknowledge and understand non-humans as equals and deserving of rights, responsibility, respect, and protection. If we treated non-humans the same as our friends and family, the world would be a much different, stronger, healthier place. It requires a shift in mindset.
What do you want people to take away from this exhibition?
I hope that my work helps people to begin re-evaluating their relationships with the natural world, and to start thinking about the natural world not as an assemblage of objects or resources, but in terms of connections, encounters, and relationships.
Much of the art world places so much importance on conceptualization, often at the expense of beauty and craftsmanship. I hope my work demonstrates a convergence of all these values.
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Interview by Glodeane Brown
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