KIRSTY BUDGE
BURIED IN BITS

NADA NEW YORK
548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
Booth 4.16

2-5 MAY 2024

In Buried in Bits, Aotearoa-born and Australia-based artist Kirsty Budge presents a new body of work that continues her exploration of painting as a medium that acts “as some kind of connective tissue between the past and the present, as well as a paradoxical intention to transcend both”.

Budge’s paintings emerge from a process that combines deep introspection and an interest in psychoanalysis, and a broader view that embraces the richness of the world in all its absurdity and poignance. They are a complex and ambiguous mix of figuration, abstraction, personal narrative and external observation.

In Budge’s process, the removal of paint is equal to its application. Layering and excavation are vital to the construction of the composition, as forms that initially appear to be at the forefront of the work are actually exposed remnants of the past underpainting. This continual process of re-inscription stems from the artist’s understanding of the ever shifting relationship between memory, dreams and perspective as guided by unconscious processes.

Buried in Bits reflects on the pooling of memory across vast distances of time, place and bodies, seeking to capture a topography that is reflected, distorted and internalised by the subjects that dwell in it. The paintings are underscored by sensations that waver between dislocation and immersion, psychic burials and epiphanies.

'A bit' is a series of related jokes strung together into a few minutes of material. Bits can be concepts that are made funny with cooperating one liners and punchlines. To the artist, each painting is similar to 'a bit' in the metaphorical "stand-up comedy special" of a solo exhibition. They are a series of parts strung together in an attempt to narrate or contemplate observations, various experiences in a quest to assign a verbalised symbolic meaning. The proverbial punchline, in this instance, is buried within an amalgam of the title and the elements of each work. The negative spaces and the pauses are as crucial and relevant. They are open to interpretation, to perhaps see a bigger idea of what is there and what is not.

The meaning in these works is buried in tangents and references, and applying a forensic approach to interpretation is relished by Budge as part of the quest to identify their meaning. The parts have a scattered burial, making it near impossible to identify the metaphorical body.

EXHIBITED WORKS