Unframed
In this photomontage, the repeated black-and-white photograph was taken on a July summer afternoon in the artist's then studio on Dean Street in Brooklyn, New York. The triangles of dappled sunlight are from a photograph also taken in summertime, in New Zealand, one February. This juxtaposition is informed by the knowledge—not just an understanding, but crucially a felt experience—that as the days grow shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, they grow longer in the artist’s native country in the Southern Hemisphere. This concern with parallel existences—and with the puzzles and contradictions that come with them--is central to Broughan’s practice. The repetition of imagery is a mode of abstraction, it also speaks about patterns of behavior, and furthermore its echo asks the viewer to look, relook, and think again.
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.