2009 - Judy Millar
Judy Millar, 2008. Photo courtesy of Judy Millar.
Core Team Members
Commissioner: Jenny Harper
Deputy Commissioner: Heather Galbraith
Curators: Leonhard Emmerling
Project Manager: Tanea Heke
Exhibition Attendants
Veronica Green, Simon Glaister, Julia Holdernes, Marnie Slater, Robyn Pickens, Thomasin Sleigh, Shelley Jahnke-Bishop, Frances Loeffler, Serena Bentley
Project Publication
Giraffe–Bottle–Gun
Editor: Leonhard Emmerling
Contributing Writers: Jennifer Gross, Seymour H. Knox Jr
Designer: Harald Richter
Publisher: Kerber Verlag
New Zealand’s participation at the Biennale Arte 2009 was titled The Collision and comprised two exhibitions: Judy Millar’s Giraffe-Bottle-Gun and Francis Upritchard’s, Save Yourself.
Judy Millar’s exhibition Giraffe-Bottle-Gun was a site-specific installation created for Venice’s only circular church, La Maddalena.
Large painted canvases surge and loop around the circular church, channeling the path of the viewer and establishing views and vistas around and across the architectural space. It challenged the traditional relationship between the object of art and the exhibition space by pushing viewers up close to the canvases in an immersive experience. The colour coursed through the church, almost spilling out onto the piazza outside.
Giraffe-Bottle-Gun was located a short distance from Frances Upritchard’s Save Yourself.
Both Judy Millar’s and Francis Upritchard’s installations returned to New Zealand in February 2010 for a four month exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Works from both were purchased by the museum for the national collection.
More on the artist
Judy Millar was born in Auckland and grew up on Auckland’s North Shore. Since 2005 she has shared her time between Auckland and Berlin and has a significant reputation in Europe.
Her paintings are held in all major public collections in New Zealand and in several international collections including the Kunstmuseum St Gallen and Tichy Foundation in Prague.
Millar received the paramount award in the 2002 Wallace Art Awards, was the inaugural winner of the McCahon House Residency in 2006 and was awarded the Creative New Zealand Visual Arts Residency in New York in 2009.
In 2011 she returned to La Biennale di Venezia with a Collateral Event Time, Space, Existence, was included in Rohkunstbau, Berlin in 2010 and has had solo exhibitions at the Auckland Art Gallery (2002) and the IMA, Brisbane (2013).
Millar studied at The University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating with a BFA in 1980 and an MFA in 1983. As recipient of a scholarship from the Italian Government in 1990, she spent a year in Turin, Italy, where she studied Italian arts of the 1960s and 1970s. She was a lecturer at University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts from 1998 to 2005 and a part time lecturer since 2007.
Judy Millar, "Giraffe – Bottle – Gun", installation view, 2009. Photo: Judy Millar.
Judy Millar, "Giraffe – Bottle – Gun", installation view, 2009. Photo: Judy Millar.
Judy Millar, "Giraffe – Bottle – Gun", exhibition catalogue. 2009. Design: Kerber Art, photo: Gow Langsford Gallery.