Judith Burrows

The panels of the screens are lightly welded, held together by a thread.

The organic in transformation, communicating with the unstable man-made in turn influenced by the elements, and the seasons. An exchange takes place through corrosion and decay.

Tension between the decaying materials and attempts to manipulate by holding back areas with tape, adding water at varying temperatures and acidity, leaves an indeterminate result suggesting an inability to control nature.

Variations in colour and depth of patination exposes seasonal differences, cycles that reveal matter in transformation. Rich tones resembling the colours of pollutants, and a form decided by nature and the elements, in the printed outlines of the source material.

There is a sense of transience and impermanence posing questions on the transitional nature of life, and a cycle of change.

Cubes, hollow, perforated, expanded, folded, welded and placed together or in isolation in a balancing state, with potential to fall.

Planets in constellation,

During Lockdown 2020, I worked on 2D steel panels observing the reactions of organic matter to the transforming metal over time and the seasonal patterns of decay.

The deconstruction of the steel, conveys an organic return to an unrefined form, particularly evident when primal matter reacts to the surfaces. An exchange takes place through corrosion. Both vegetation and metal reach a point of vulnerability.

A synergy and mutuality of man with nature. There is a sense of transience and impermanence posing questions on the transitional nature of life, and cycles of change.

A dialogue between the organic matter and the materials; a tension between the living and the inanimate and between myself and process, set up like scientific experiment in my garden. The type of vegetation, stages of photosynthesis, moisture content, and crucially the elements; the acidity of rain, ice, heat of the sun, power of the wind, and seasonal light availability, all play a part in the outcome.

Variations in colour and depth of patination reveal the seasonal differences, cycles that reveal matter in transformation. Rich tones resembling the colours of pollutants, and a form decided by nature and the elements, in the printed outlines of the source material.

As a result of these findings I am currently working on 13 large panels reflecting the13-month cycle of the lunar calendar for RCA 2021.

Shards are a response to desolate wastelands: homage to landscapes made barren by human detritus in a place no longer useful.

Steel totems, artefacts to antiquity, heavy and rigid, with acutely sharp edges suggest intransigence. Lines and marks on their surface, created from interaction with each other in the elements, in antibiosis. Scars on the surface. Solid and sharp yet holding a delicacy and vulnerability.

When separated a sense of ‘lostness’ in contradiction of the status quo. Small metal squares cling like limpets to the surface, others lean precariously on each other: the tenuousness of the human condition.

Discarded they lie heavily on each other, a pile of waste material.

Liberated they interact, or react one against the other in antibiotic condition.

Changed by the elements, organic matter, alongside my attempt at intervention

Traces of dust, decay, rust, ash, dead leaves, bones, sand, salt, the effluent of my processes, are collected and placed in 8 hand-blown glass globes, like fragile glass coffins,

“Make yourself one with dust. This is the profound identity. The eternal profundity between man and nature… of ash and the earth from which we come and from which we return’” Antonio Tapies from Tao te Ching

Transparent and Womblike, yet inaccessible with sharp edges, the globes are balanced on sculpted, poisonous zinc, cut into sharp barbed-wire strands - a contradiction between the purity of glass and the jagged hostility of the wire. These in turn are precariously placed on a thick sheet of plate glass, itself then balanced on 27cm high rusted steel rods.

Experiments in print on metal and paper, include lithography, etching and screen-printing, as well as flatbed digital printing.

I am currently working on a large 3-panel project 30x125cmx3 for a collaboration with theo/artistry a collaborative project set up by St Andrews University.

Empty streets, husks of buildings in vast landscapes stretch to infinity embracing notions of ‘Lostness’ in an incongruous, discordant, apocalyptic wasteland.

Oil paintings on canvas corrupted by liquid dripping in space: rust pigment from decaying steel. Re-appropriated lithography, letterpress, and metal, shift viewpoint to beyond the surface.

Installation expresses a landscape of interconnectivity in emotional uncertainty.

From a ‘lostness’, to re-establishing connection, before finding further vulnerability in a state of metamorphosis, cause and effect, precarity - the language of ‘Uncertain States’.

infinity Particles, In Morphic Resonance, Screens, en Estos Momentos