Plot
A garden, a small piece of ground, a dramatic narrative, the planning of a course. A recurrent subject in Plot, and in Broughan’s work in general, is that process of understanding one place, one time—and, by extension, one state of being—is through an allusion to myriad alternatives. We locate ourselves with close and constant reference to memory and imagination, interpreting our surroundings according to their examples.
The ten works in Plot are striking juxtapositions of structure and surface that alternate between the figurative and the abstract. Layering photographs between vinyl, leather, and mesh, and sewing the printed images directly to the fabric’s surface, Broughan’s playful arrangements highlight her materials’ diverse qualities and associations.
The golden polyester ground of Honey, for example, is punctuated by nineties-vintage large-format transparencies from the stage-managed world of food and product photography, errant splotches of gel adding kinetic-organic energy, while Later sets unedited drink-garnish transparencies against a print of a camellia bush from the artist’s native New Zealand, each element casting its neighbor in a subtly different light.
Broughan’s deceptively unfussy arrangements express a sensitivity to objecthood and proportion, and aim at both equilibrium and open-endedness.
Jude Broughan
Jude Broughan is a New Zealand-born artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Recent solo and group exhibitions include “Best of 2012,” Soloway, Brooklyn, and “Written By Snakes,” Churner and Churner, New York (both 2012); “New. New York,” Essl Museum, Vienna (2012–13); “Plot,” Dimensions Variable, Miami, and “Certain Lights” Churner and Churner, New York (both 2014); “A Weekend in the Country” Magnan Metz Gallery, New York, and “Honey,” Calder & Lawson Gallery, Hamilton, New Zealand (both 2015); and “Ornamentation of the Joint,” Old Pfizer Building, Brooklyn (2016). Broughan is a 2015 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee and a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College.