Plinth

On closer look, the artist’s spectacular textures and marks are uncovered. The sides of each piece are thick and gloopy, revealing the multiple layers of coloured plaster that are smoothed to a glaze-like surface on top. From within the potent, spidery tendrils of deep black, thin streaks of vibrant blue, yellow, pink and red peak through. The work is visually striking but also evokes the forms with which we comprehend the invisible, such as sound waves or energy fields. The room is completed with a single monochrome sculpture, which resembles a tree stump. This compact form could stir in the viewer a desire to sit down, or be seen as another being in the space, which is also observing this almighty set of plaster canvases.

A short walk away at The Sunday Painter, the other half of the exhibition has a more traditional gallery hang, featuring smaller plaster works flooded with daylight upstairs, and a series of intimately scaled pieces downstairs. In the basement, the wall-hung works are illuminated intensely by spotlights; these bright beams almost become part of the works, to such an extent that I first understood them to be formed from white spray paint. Light is just as important a material in Judge’s work as plaster or pigment. These surround a weighty central sculpture that has a coffin-like feel, with one long piece situated on the ground and another hanging around eyeline directly above. The two look as though they could close shut at any moment. Their scale and position in relation to the viewer also creates a dual experience, whereby we might imagine ourselves to be visiting the encased body of another person, or else witnessing a structure that could hold our own form. The layout of this downstairs space calls to mind the peaceful symmetry of a chapel, which contrasts with the burst of energy present in each small black-and-white plaster piece.

Judge is an expert with his materials, and the works become more than the sum of their parts, summoning the emotional force of funeral rites and spiritual rituals. Reflecting the artist’s long history of bodily interventions, the two shows were brought together on opening night by a procession, which explored the idea of the funeral – something that exists in many different forms across cultures – as an act of performance. As part of this, the sculpture that sits downstairs at The Sunday Painter was carried through the streets by performers who were painted white, before being set ablaze through a deep channel in its centre.

Ideas of life and death are woven through Judge’s works, which maintain a constant balance between lightness and darkness, and the meanings we have attached to both. His materials are highly modified in their making; the process behind his technically complex final pieces is difficult to discern without prior knowledge. This transformational quality reflects the body’s own journey from life to death, as its physical form becomes ashes and enters a metaphysical realm. Likewise, his pieces move between cultures and centuries. His refined palette and industrial materials reflect the monumental forms of 20th-century modernist art and design. Meanwhile, their making and compelling aura are inspired by the traditions of Indian Neo Tantric painting, and their performative elements are informed by rural Punjab’s funeral traditions. The title of the exhibition reflects on Native American ceremonial dances, which were intended to raise the spirits of the dead to fight against colonial violence and control of the land.

The exhibition plays with viewers’ personal comfort or discomfort around death. Can death itself be full of vitality, or do we close ourselves off to anything outside of the “rational”? Do we see the supernatural as something ethereal, intriguing, or terrifying? His play with explosive black forms calls to mind the aesthetic tropes of thrillers and ghost stories (he was a key artist in Somerset House’s 2022 exhibition ‘The Horror Show!’) yet his composition and treatment of the work renders it somewhat peaceful and mediative. Judge confronts a contemporary western culture that sees the spiritual as something terrifying and welcomes a more human and nuanced connection with it. His work asks us to embrace the depths of death, the moment we move between the physical and intangible, and to revel in the power of greeting it with eyes open.

By Emily Steer

Cover image: Harminder Judge, A ghost dance (folded into), 2024. Plaster, polymer, pigment, scrim, oil. 380 x 990 x 4 cm. (20 parts each measuring 190 x 99 x 4 cm)