Judy Cotton
Natural Curiosity: An Intimate History
January 7th - February 12th
IRL Miami
Open Saturdays from 12pm to 5pm and by appointment

A conversation with artist Judy Cotton and curator Lowery Sims will be held at IRL Miami on Saturday February 4th at 1pm.

“By aid of delineation in painting, the measurements of the earth, the water, and the stars have come to be understood.” —Albrecht Durer, Food For Young Painters, 1512

IRL is pleased to announce an exhibition of artwork by Australian born artist Judy Cotton. For her first exhibition in Miami, Cotton will present a series of works drawn from her travels in her native Australia and throughout the tropics. Through varied media and content, these series are unified by the artist’s meditation on personal loss through the lens of the natural environment.
Judy Cotton was born in Broken Hill, Australia and resides in Lyme, Connecticut. Raised in a deeply political household, Cotton removed herself from the turmoil of her family’s political life to focus on her art. Cotton’s passion derives from the close observation and representation of the natural world through drawing, painting and sculpture. Cotton studied drawing at Victoria University, Wellington, printmaking in Japan, and the art of Sumi brush painting in South Korea where she was commissioned to illustrated the Birds of South Korea. Cotton moved to New York in 1971 where she worked as a writer and artist.

Natural Curiosity: An Intimate History explores both new and old work by Cotton. The selection of drawings on view at IRL are gathered from hundreds of studies of palm trees, which Cotton describes as “speaking trees” and monkeys found in Central America and the Caribbean. In her recent work, Cotton has been collecting and looking to nature for its response to the changing climate—looking at wasp nests, insects, birds and wombats to address ecological degradation and species loss. Cotton’s use of wasps nests pays homage to the nests’ original designers, showing their complex, eusocial structures in abstract forms. Through the casting of wasp nests and a host of found animals in resin, the connection between humans and nature is severed in Cotton’s work. The juxtaposition between the natural and artificial reflects her deep understanding of life, sociality, and resilience of all forms.
Judy Cotton (b. 1941, Broken Hill, Australia) lives and works in Lyme, Connecticut. Cotton has had 33 solo shows and numerous group shows in the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Great Britain. Her work is in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Gallery, the New Britain Museum of Art, the Florence Griswold Museum and the Australian National Gallery of Art.

Lowery Stokes Sims is a specialist in modern and contemporary art. She received her B.A. in art history from Queens College of the City University of New York; her M.A. in art history from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Her dissertation, Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923–1992, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002. Sims served on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999 and then as executive director, president and adjunct curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2000-2007. Sims has lectured widely nationally and internationally and served as a visiting critic and lecturer at Alfred University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Hawaii among others. In 1991, she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association for distinction in art criticism. From 2005-10 she served as A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University; as Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City (2005, 2006); as a fellow at the Clark Art Institute and Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota in 2007. Sims was also a member of the selection jury for the World Trade Center memorial in 2003-2004.

IRL is located at 8395 NE 2nd Ave Miami, FL 33138. The current exhibition will be open from January 7th to February 12th on Saturdays from 12pm to 5pm and by appointment. To make an appointment or for any further questions contact [email protected] or call 786-384-4856.

IRL is an artist run space run by artists Eddie Negron and Marla Rosen. Natural Curiosity: An Intimate History is co-curated by Laura Randall.

irl-institute.com

Lilac Floe, 36 x 36 in 2017 © Judy Cotton