The Push & the Pull (2022)
The Push & the Pull, participatory durational event (5 hours), 2022 The Push and the Pull was a new site-specific work by Ben Judd, for Whitstable Biennale 2022. Created in partnership with local community groups the new work developed themes of…
The Absolute (2021)
The Absolute enriches the world previously developed for Judd’s exhibition at De Montfort University in 2018. Drawing on Leicester’s rich history, including the 20th century immigration of dispossessed groups, the exhibition explores a fictional lost community, the Welfarers, that once…
The Origin (2019-21)
The Origin is the outcome of Judd’s Stanley Picker Fellowship in Art and Design, Kingston University London. The project culminated with an installation at the gallery, a boat on the River Thames and a series of performances, workshops and…
Nothing Human is Strange to Me (2018)
Nothing Human is Strange to Me, exhibition and performance (30:00 min), 2018 For his fig-futures commission at The Gallery, De Montfort University, Ben Judd presented a performance, costumes, images from the university’s archives, objects based on artefacts excavated locally, and a…
From the Ground to the Sun (2018)
From the Ground to the Sun, participatory site-specific installation (2018) For London’s Art Night 2018, Judd presented a participatory site-specific installation in the heart of an existing community. Five temporary, re-usable domes were built on a public square in Doddington Estate, Battersea….
The Part Versus the Whole (2018)
The Part Versus the Whole, exhibition and performance (25:00 min), 2018 Combining an eclectic mix of materials from the Victoria Gallery and Museum’s collections and archives, including historic magic lantern slides and the archeological photography of John Garstang, with new objects,…
The Natural Order (2017)
The Natural Order, performance (10:00 min), 2017 Five young gymnasts performed a series of movements, shifting from simple to complex, and from individual to group. At the same time, a group of singers sang phrases which shifted from solo to choral. The…
It Grows Like a Strange Flower (2017)
It Grows Like a Strange Flower, participatory durational event (36 hours) and video (45:00 min), 2017 An offsite commission for Bloc Projects, It Grows Like a Strange Flower created a temporary, re-usable geodesic dome (the structure famously reinterpreted by Buckminster Fuller and the utopian…
Who Shall Separate Us Now? (2016)
Who Shall Separate Us Now? performance and video, 30:00 min, 2016 A commission for Radar / Loughborough University Arts, in a 1,200m2 space with gymnasts and singers. The performance considered the university as an institution that encourages and requires students to…
Apart, We are Together (2015)
Apart, We are Together, performance and video, 30:00 min, 2015 This performance and video, which was part of fig-2 at ICA, London, was a direct development of A Deep and Tenebrous Unity, and employed the ‘pose slide’ genre of magic lantern…
A Deep and Tenebrous Unity (2015)
A Deep and Tenebrous Unity, performance, 25:00 min, 2015 A performance at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, which further explored themes of closeness/distance and revealed/hidden. Performers used text taken from conversations with Icelanders during Judd’s residency in Seyðisfjörður in December 2014. Seyðisfjörður…
Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day (2014-15)
Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day, performance, 30:00 min, 2014-15 Taking place at sea on an historic Thames sailing barge as part of Whitstable Biennale 2014, this performance formed a temporary, and fragile, community…
We See Nothing Truly Until We Understand It (2014)
We See Nothing Truly Until We Understand It, performance, 40:00 min, 2014 A performance and live broadcast at Flatford Mill in Suffolk (Constable country), in response to an invitation from Field Broadcast: http://fieldbroadcast.org/projects/FB-pressrelease.pdf Performers were on boats on the River Stour….
I Am On Top of the World (2013)
I Am On Top of the World, five-channel video, 21:08 min, 2013 A video shot on an island on a boating lake in Epping Forest, London. Performers, on boats, gradually converge on the island, singing broken chords that are traditionally…
Assemblage (2013)
Assemblage, performance and single-channel video, 15:49 min, 2013 A performance that took place in the bandstand of the Arboretum, Nottingham. Audience members were seated in the dark with a choir, who sang broken chords, increasing in volume as the shutters…
Ensemble (2013)
Ensemble, 2013, 10:18 min A performance that took place during the opening of Ensemble (an exhibition which Judd co-curated with Dave Charlesworth). Singers, embedded in the audience, sang an arpeggio, which increased in tempo and volume. Dancers, also embedded in…
Going into Raptures (2013)
Going into Raptures, 2013, 180:00 min Judd’s performance with the musician Denise Boyd, in response to the work of Traci Kelly When Judd was approached by the artist Traci Kelly to respond to her work he started thinking…
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (2011)
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 2011, 45 min A performance produced while on residency at the Wassaic Project, upstate New York. Actors used text from American political speeches, from which political references had been removed, as well as from…
Mysterium (2011)
Mysterium, 2011, 45:00 min A performance at James Taylor Gallery, London, loosely based on the unrealised and unrealisable opera of the same name, by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. Influenced by his condition of synaesthesia – the intermingling of different sensory…
The Island of Lost Conceits (2010)
The Island of Lost Conceits, 2010, 30:00 min A performance at La Galleria, New York City, as part of the exhibition To Believe. Actors, embedded in the audience, used text from literary sources that describe an island utopia (Washington Irving’s…
Concerning the Difference Between the Delights of Pleasure and True Happiness (2010)
Concerning the Difference Between the Delights of Pleasure and True Happiness, 2010, 38:30 min The performance Concerning the Difference Between the Delights of Pleasure and True Happiness was Judd’s contribution to a group exhibition Fourteen Interventions at Swedenborg House, London,…
Observance (2009)
Observance, 2009, 22:34 min Observance was a performance and resulting video at The Barbican Art Gallery, London. Observance was funded by an Arts Council England grant, and was staged within the exhibition Radical Nature. Actors carried out a ritual, based…
Polyrhythm (2009)
Polyrhythm, 2009, 24:22 min Polyrhythm, produced in Union Square, New York City, was a choreographed series of actions performed by actors and musicians in public. Using text from presidential speeches from Washington to Obama, but with the politics removed, the…
Conversations With the Other Side (2009)
Conversations With the Other Side, 2009, with Sidsel Christensen Conversations With the Other Side was a collaborative performance with Sidsel Christensen. From their study of traditional forms of mediumship, hypnosis and religious rituals, the artists developed a playful and open…
The Symbol (2009)
The Symbol, 2009, 8:49 min The Symbol was made while on residency at the Banff Centre, Canada, 2009. Judd invited a shaman of European descent to give his reading of the centre and its site; his practice involved Judd more…
Parallelism (2009)
Parallelism, 2009, 6:37 min Produced at the same time as The Symbol (on residency at the Banff Centre, Canada), Judd invited a psychic to respond to the centre and its site.
Presence (2008)
Presence, 2008, 8:24 min Judd invited two clairvoyants to give a public demonstration, at the opening of the exhibition Stationed in Winchester House, London. Judd is seated in the audience, and one of the clairvoyants ‘reads’ an aspect of his…
Close to You (2008)
Close to You, 2008, 19:02 min Judd attended an evening class for trainee psychics in Surrey. He was invited to stand up in front of the group and give a public demonstration of clairvoyance. He was guided through the process…
I Will Heal You (2007)
I Will Heal You, 2007, 12:12 min While on residency in Cali, Colombia, Judd fabricated the contradictory movement I Will Heal You, which took its beliefs from an eclectic range of sources. Jewellery, furniture, clothes and an architectural model acted…
In This Wonderful Country (Part 2, 2005)
In This Wonderful Country (Part 2), 2005, 15:14 min Judd used the words of preachers from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and central London, whom he filmed for several months. After isolating key phrases, he supplied sections of the…
In This Wonderful Country (Part 1, 2005)
In This Wonderful Country (Part 1), 2005, 4:20 min Judd uses the words of preachers from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and central London, whom he filmed for several months. After isolating key phrases, he supplied sections of the texts…
The Truth Will Set You Free (2005)
The Truth Will Set You Free, 2005, 11:00 min The Truth Will Set You Free uses the words of preachers from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and central London, whom Judd filmed for several months. After isolating key phrases, he…
The Hide (2004)
The Hide, 2004, 4:03 min Shot in the London Wetland Centre, the video focusses on bird spotters both inside and outside a ‘hide’.
I Can and Cannot Live Without (2004)
I Can and Cannot Live Without, 2004, 3:44 min Judd videod Morris dancers, an English folk dance dating back to the 15th century, in Putney, London. Like the train spotters and amateur photographers, the Morris dancers are an all-male group…
I Love (2003)
I Love, 2003, 7:40 min (2:05 min extract) I Love was videod surreptitiously at an amateur photography club in London. The voice-over that Judd has added describes an idea of separateness and connectedness. By observing small movements, such as a man…
The Future Never Looks How You Expected It To Look (2003)
The Future Never Looks How You Expected it to Look, 2003, 3:43 min A video made from stills used as backdrops for photographic shoots, similar to the ones used in Judd’s photographic work. Judd worked with an audio descriptor (who…
You’ve Changed (2002)
You’ve Changed, 2002, 3:22 min Judd’s activity as an artist is close to that of a tourist. The tourist’s gaze through the camera suggests an intimacy with their subjects, despite being a stranger in an unfamiliar place. You’ve Changed explores…
I Don’t Want You To Change (2002)
I Don’t Want You to Change, 2002, 5:06 min Shot at Heathrow airport, the video depicts aeroplane spotters, on a seemingly endless quest to record and collect.
I Miss (2002)
I Miss, 2002, 11:10 min For I Miss, Judd has videod trainspotters at Doncaster station in the north of England. As a station where lots of train lines converge, Doncaster is also a place where men of all ages converge…
Lost and Found (2002)
Lost and Found, 2002, 4:00 min A video of passers by on Westminster Bridge, London. The camera and the voice-over appear to search for, and find, specific individuals
I Remember (Cindy Sherman) (2000)
I Remember (Cindy Sherman), 2000, 4:53 min (1:13 min extract) The video suggests a feeling of personal involvement with anonymous women that Judd saw on the street. The voice-over describes things that the women are wearing or doing, such…
I Remember (Glamour) (1999)
I Remember (Glamour), 1999, 19:30 min This video was taken in a studio in London for amateur photographers. The model is posing for photographs who are asking her to sit or stand in different positions. Judd added a voice-over to…
