Nauscopy

November 17 - 23, 2011

chashama 461 Gallery
461 West 126th Street
New York, NY

Opening: Thursday, Nov 17, 2011, 6–8pm

Hours: Fri–Sun, Tues-Wed, 12pm–6pm

Jude Broughan’s exhibition “Nauscopy” (the obscure term refers to the ability, sometimes pretended, to sight ships or land at great distances) is a meditation on contingency. A sequence of imagined journeys, it seeks to cast light on various points of departure and arrival, on the anxiety of distance, and on the planning and experience of travel itself. Broughan’s forbears made the crossing from the United Kingdom to New Zealand by sea, and the artist still feels the pull of her birthplace—particularly when events such as the recent oil spill in Tauranga come to light. Also central to the work in “Nauscopy” is the idea of a sea-change, a transformation in which form is retained but substance is radically altered.

In “Nauscopy,” Broughan combines photography with colored and painted paper, translucent and textured vinyl in collages that are ‘sutured’ together physically with thread, and conceptually with ideas around narrative and continuity. Images from the artist’s neighborhood, including shots taken at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, appear alongside others taken in other countries—or en route to or from them.

Jude Broughan is a New Zealand-born, New York-based artist. Her work has been included in exhibtions at 179 Canal, Newman Popiashvili, Sunday L.E.S., Heist Gallery, Brooklyn Arts Council Gallery, and Pendergast Gallery (La Jolla). She graduated from the School of Visual Arts, is currently an MFA candidate at Hunter College.

This exhibit is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.