The Birds and Imagined Landscapes of Judy Holding
ARTIST FLOOR TALK: 2PM SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER 2025.
THURSDAY 2 OCTOBER - SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2025
Just in case you missed the opening of Archetypal and Particular - the birds and the imagined landscapes of Judy Holding. Read On!
We are delighted to welcome Antonia Syme AM to officially open Judy Holding’s exhibition.
Antonia has worked for many years in the arts and cultural sector as a director, consultant, conservator and curator. Her experience has spanned both the private and public sector, in Australian cultural institutions and as Director of the Syme Dodson Gallery in Sydney.
Antonia is the Former Director of the Australian Tapestry Workshop and of Artbank. Antonia has held positions on a multitude of interesting boards including -
· The Federal Government – Taxation Incentive for the arts and cultural gifts board
· National Trust and Museums and Collection Committee board, NSW
· Abbottsford Convent Foundation Board
· National Museum board
· Museum of Applied Arts and Science.
I am sure this is just the tip of the iceberg of the many achievements and credits Antonia Syme AM has to her list of worthwhile ventures and professional positions. It is no surprise she has an Order of Australia and even wearing the little yellow badge to prove it!
Antonia is a longtime very good friend of the artist Judy Holding and I think well placed to say a few words and to open this exhibition.
Kareen Anchen – Gallery Director
Antonia Syme AM
“It is an honour to be asked to open duties exhibition today on the land of the Djarr Djarr Warrung peoples to whom I pay my deep respects.
Land and landscape are at the heart of Judy’s work and have been since the beginning of her art practice.
Her work, and forgive me if you know her work intimately, is both multilayered and multiform. She is very accomplished across a range of media. When Judy was an art student, she was criticized by her lecturers for wanting to work across many mediums, rather than focus solely on painting drawing or sculpture and her work in an early show was described as facile by one critic for this reason.
But she trusted her instincts and now of course, it is seen as the strength to be multidisciplinary in one's practice.
Judy’s CV runs for many pages. She has exhibited in over 50 solo shows and more than 130 group shows in Australia and overseas. Her work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, State Library of Victoria. Artbank, Parliament House in Canberra, MAG Northern Territory, Library and Archives of Northern Territory, Shepperton Art Gallery, Benalla, Mildura Art Centres and a number of university collections.
Judy is represented by Alcaston Gallery in Melbourne and in Sydney by Stella Downer.
Judy has been awarded a number of public art commissions including in Manangatang and Swan Hill regional gallery, and Latrobe university.
Judy is endlessly creative and highly skilled in expressing her passion for the landscape.
For Judy it has always been about the landscape, particularly in regional Victoria and in Murrumburr country in Kakadu, far north Australia.
Judy first drove up from Melbourne to Kakadu in the late 1970s and then continued her camping trips up there every 2 or 3 years on the lands of several traditional owners, with whom she became good friends. She'd stay for 4-6 weeks at a time working on site, then drive back to Melbourne.
After a number of these trips, where she was often travelling alone, she learned of the ‘artists camps’ that the then director of MAGNT Colin Jack Hinton was running. She was told by him dismissively she couldn't participate as it was only for male artists because women couldn't cope!! She was so furious at his attitude that she hand died and handstitched two large quilts, to document her rejection.
This country has had a profound impact on Judy’s observations of landscape; particularly through her close relationship as older sister YABOK to her YAGERR younger sister Jessie Alderson. Jessie is a senior traditional owner of the Murrumburr clan.
45 years of this strong relationship have seen many shared family milestones, including the scattering of Judy's husband Clyde’s ashes on Murrumburr country, and introducing their children and then their grandchildren to each other.
Being protected by the protocols being properly observed, has given Judy a strong sense of curiosity and safety in her travels in the far north. This deep interest, with her delight and fascination with the natural world, is manifest through her beautiful sensitive paintings and her exquisite palette, and through the whimsy of her sculpture.
The legendary Tim Lowe says that parrots and songbirds are far and away the world's most intelligent birds and Australia gave the world both.
Judy's work is a celebration of our magnificent birds, as well as portraying the marks and sounds of the ancient Australian landscape made by those who have lived and travelled here forever. It is a celebration of the richness and depth of the connections between people and place.
She finds “the mental connections so incredibly rich and subtle and when overlaid with the physical connections to images of surrounding rock as reminders of times in the deep past, there occurs an alteration of one's own concept of time itself.”
For Judy and Kakadu “time seems to collapse. Past, present and future coexist in a tangible way where past events are very much a part of everyday life and influence behaviour, manners and observation.
Everything in the landscape is a being that must be considered and treated according to rules and restrictions that have been observed for millennia. There are definite hierarchies that also must be observed, and she is very conscious of the rules governing permission that are given to a balander family like hers.
Judy's work also has a very strong environmental component as she witnesses the huge, destructive scars left by industry in both the NT and Victorian Goldfields, that continue to be accumulated layer upon layer.
To me, this layering in her work has a wonderful dreamlike and poetic quality and I marvel at her endless creativity…. and her keen powers of observation, especially of our birds.
I commend Judy’s exhibition to you and invite you to savour her work in Archetypal and Particular - the birds and the imagined landscapes of Judy Holding.
Enjoy.”
Antonia Syme AM
Judy with two of her best critics: her daughter and granddaughter