Joy Gerrard - Artist of the Month, July 2022
1st July, 2022
Joy Gerrard lives and works in Belfast. She graduated with a BA from NCAD, Dublin and an MA and MPhil from the Royal College of Art, London. Joy is known for work that investigates different systems of relations between crowds, architecture and the built environment. Using Japanese ink on paper and canvas, she makes detailed ink works which re-create recent political protests from around the world.
Vigil/Protest (London/2021. Memorial for Sarah Everard. Scotland Yard. Version 1) is part of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection. This painting is part of a larger series of work made by the artist in 2021 that focused on women’s rights and safety. It reproduces a helicopter view of the Sisters Uncut protest that moved through central London from Scotland Yard to Westminster after the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard, a young woman abducted and murdered by a police officer. Gerrard is interested in capturing a moment during the protest and re-presenting it as a kind of ‘history painting’. She redraws and collages the original image and then re-paints it with monochrome sumi ink on canvas. She does this to frame questions about the event that caused the protest and also; how we as the public respond to media images. In this work Gerrard is reflecting on bodily fragility and the emotional energy of the march, using the liquidity and materiality of the ink to visually highlight these issues.
Further information about Joy and her work can be found at www.joygerrard.com