Untitled (opening cage and ribs displayed)

Harminder Judge (1982 - )

plaster, polymer, pigment, scrim, oil, wax

2022
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection

    Harminder Judge’s alchemical sculptural works seeth with colour and vibrations. His transportive works reference Indian neo-tantric paintings of the 1960s alongside 20th-century abstract expressionism. The works are made by layering pigments into pools of wet plaster followed by stages of sanding, polishing and oiling. In this monolithic transportive form, colour rises and saturates the surface, emanating from the granite-like depth beneath. The effect is that of a portal to look through and enter, allowing for broader contemplation to take place.   

    Harminder’s titles often serve as reference points to a pivotal and formative moment in his teenage years. Arriving in Amritsar, Punjab, at the age of 15, Harminder made the journey to his family’s village in Attowal where he took part in the funeral rites of his grandfather who had recently passed away. This involved intimate rituals such as undressing and washing the body, preparing the cremation pyre, tending the burning pyre throughout the night and collecting his grandfather’s ashes, bone fragments and jewellery in the morning. This physical and spiritual transformation of body becoming ash, of material becoming immaterial, physical becoming metaphysical, are concepts that underpin his practice.


  • About the artist
    Harminder Judge (b.1982, Rotherham) lives and works in London, UK. He received his BA in Fine Art from Northumbria University in 2005 and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 2021.
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  • Details
    Title
    Untitled (opening cage and ribs displayed)
    Date
    2022
    Medium
    plaster, polymer, pigment, scrim, oil, wax
    Dimensions
    height: 235 cm; width: 224 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from The Sunday Painter, 2022
    Provenance
    The Sunday Painter; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection/CAS, December 2022
    GAC number
    19124