Jude Broughan

Soft Space is a paired down piece from the "White Vinyl Cutouts" series. The surfaces of the “White Vinyl Cutouts” are enigmatic, but in general resemble porcelain and reference stretched canvases. In the Cutouts, at issue is the destruction of image, which is wiped away, cut through, cropped, and desaturated. By also cutting holes or apertures in her works’ supports, Broughan refers to the mechanics (and limitations) of photography, digital manipulation, and vision itself, and alludes to our seemingly innate tendency to edit. As New Zealand artist and critic Peter Dornauf writes, this "exposes the constructed nature of the subject while also providing a simulation of depth, which seems like the contradiction it actually is. Such incongruity and paradox is the essence of this artist’s practice."

Jude Broughan creates photo-based collages and assemblages, slicing and stitching together original and found photographs, fabrics, painted and printed elements, in formal compositions that are both abstracted and allegorical- ruminations on photography and perception, as well as processes of traveling and migration, and patterns of human behavior. Her approach is that of a printmaker's mind, attentive to color and material. The use of stitching allows the images, distinguished by their immediacy, to be incorporated into carefully composed arrangements, the thread dividing our attention between the physicality of the art object and the patterning of its surface. In addition to her assemblage studio practice, Jude Broughan also produces limited edition artists' books, and prints. 

Originally from New Zealand, Jude Broughan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions in New York, Miami, and Hamilton, New Zealand, as well as numerous group exhibitions and projects in Austria, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States, including the MoMA Design Store. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2015 and a Yaddo residency in 2018. Her work has been reviewed in Kolaj Magazine, Musée Magazine, Domino, Art in America, Blouin Artinfo, Collector Daily, Eye Contact, The Village Voice, and Whitehot Magazine, among others. Broughan holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Hunter College. She teaches in the Visual Arts Department at SUNY College at Old Westbury.