In My Studio: Auckland Artist Judy Darragh Set To Unveil 11m Sculpture At Sudima Hotel

Acclaimed Kiwi artist Judy Darragh talks with Varsha Anjali about creating Ether.

Protruding, alien-like bubbles dressed in the loudest shades of colour will hover inside a vertical glass section of Sudima Hotel’s atrium in the Auckland CBD today. It won’t look like it’s from this planet. And when you make eye contact, its maker, acclaimed Auckland artist Judy Darragh, wants you to “feel knocked out”.

“When we look at art ... it should be something that is transformative,” Darragh tells Viva from her art studio on her property. As we converse, her new public sculpture, Ether, sits in a box ahead of its final installation, two years after the first sketches.

At 11 metres long, the sculpture to be unveiled at the 4.5-star hotel will be the first permanent artwork of its kind and scale in Aotearoa. Its size, shapes and burst of colour serve as a stark contrast against the dark charcoal and white panels of the rest of the building’s exterior, the clean, obedient aesthetic of the interior, and the hustle of the surrounding commercial district. It can’t – or won’t – avoid your gaze.

“As you can see, I’m not afraid of colour. And there’s a lot of colour phobia, I would say, often in our culture,” says the 68-year-old, who is well known for playing with bright, fluorescent hues in her work.

She reveals she was like this as a kid, too, remembering being fascinated with objects and colour when looking at her mum’s “chocka full” china cabinet. “It was all bright and colourful, and I used to love staring at it and opening the doors and taking things out [and] putting them back.”

On how she came up with the name, Darragh playfully confesses in part that there was time pressure to make a decision, before adding that she liked drawing on the “nebulous” qualities of an ether. She also found its closeness to the feminine name, Esther, appealing.

As a site-specific public piece, Ether draws significantly on the beauty of the area and the environment. The hotel faces west over the Waitematā Harbour to the Waitākere Ranges, with the best views seen from its rooftop Sunset Bar.

“I remember going the first time to look at the site, and it was sunset, and then we went up to the Sunset Bar,” Darragh recalls. “This amazing sunset, you know, the west coast glorious implosion of colour.”

In a press release, she adds that she wanted to fill the atrium with a “riot of hot reds, yellows and blues [as] an attempt to capture and contain the fleeting moments of a sunset”.

There will be more than one way that hotel guests and the public will experience the sculpture. It will be well-lit during the evenings, ensuring its constant visibility from the streets. The public will also be welcome in the hotel, and people will be able to move directly below the sculpture for a unique view.

“It just fulfilled the brief on every level – being able to experience it day and night, be underneath it and have long views towards the work,” says Deborah McCormick, the curator and producer of Ether.

When Sudima’s chief executive, Sudesh Jhunjhnuwala, allocated the area, estimated to be up to 18m long, Darragh knew she didn’t want to hang something on the wall. Instead, she wanted to “expand into the space”. She wanted to create something alive, ”like a growth or something from the outside had come in or something ... like an alien".

She decided on a PVC material, a type of synthetic plastic that inflates. “The only way we could actually [fill the space] was with this material and make it inflatable because you couldn’t build anything, it would just be too heavy, too ridiculous, too expensive.”

Plastic is at times a talking point in Darragh’s works. “I like to talk about the problem with plastic because we get addicted to plastic. Like you think, when we were kids, all the toys were plastic. And it plays on our senses of smooth, bright – all these things we love to touch ... and then next minute it’s everywhere, next minute we’re becoming plastic.”

While public art in Aotearoa is a growing space, it’s an area dominated by men. Ether presents an opportunity to highlight women’s art for both Darragh, who co-edited Femisphere and has long been advocating for better visibility for women artists, and McCormick.

“That’s what’s exciting for me is being involved in producing that work because it shines a light on female practice in the public art space,” says McCormick.

Ether will be unveiled at the Sudima Auckland hotel today.

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