Jud Wimhurst | GIMME FREEDOM (or gimme death)

13 – 29 July 2017

Images: Ian Hill Photography

GIMME FREEDOM (or gimme death) is an installation by contemporary Australian artist Jud Wimhurst. Two opposing teams of over-sized toy soldiers, each adorned in the corporate colours of an iconic fast food empire, face-off in a messy conflict. In this frivolous food fight, Jud conflates the iconography of war and fast food to draw attention to the ills of consumerism, shining a spotlight on the excess and wastefulness of convenience. Employing humour he interrogates the mechanics of contemporary life posing big questions about choice, security and freedom. In this context Jud offers GIMME FREEDOM (or gimme death) as a cautionary tale imploring us to wake up and pay attention.

Jud was the 2016 Bendigo Art Gallery Going Solo artist. This is an annual exhibition series offering a contemporary artist living and working in central Victoria the unique opportunity to work collaboratively with Gallery staff to produce a significant new work or body of works for solo exhibition. In an age of mass-production, Jud is a true craftsman with a labourintensive practice that sees him hand-building, casting and applying slick commercial finishes to his objects in his studio (a tin shed at the back of his home in Kyneton).