Judy Bourke features on the cover of the May 2024 edition. To read the magazine layout, click here or find the text version below.
It would be fair to say that Judy Bourke is having a moment. The colourful local identity, unmistakeable thanks to her distinctive pink hair (in a style that combines a fringe with a tail) and colourful vintage look, is so well-known to locals that she can’t move without being stopped in the street or at Austi pool, where she swims daily. It makes daily chores take much longer than they should, but Judy turns every occasion into a social encounter.
Recently winning the top prize in the Arts and Cultural Achievement category at 2024’s City of Wollongong Awards, Judy beat off stiff competition from organisations as an individual. The volume of applause in the room reflected the popularity of the decision. Judy is a battler, a single mother who was subject to life-threatening levels of domestic violence and raised four children on her own. Yet you don’t hear her complain.
“I’ve had a shit life,” she says matter-of-factly. “But I made a choice,” she says of her positive outlook. Growing up in a tent on a block of land in Woonona while her father, an electrician, built a house, made her tough and practical. She owned two books.
As a survivor of DV, she hasn’t forgotten others; her former sister-in-law lived with the rare and previously little understood Angelman’s Syndrome (a genetic disorder causing severe cognitive disability) and Judy has dedicated significant time and effort to campaigning and advocating for more support for those living with this symptom, lobbying for changes in legislation and improved care.
She gathers up people and things: her home is a bowerbird’s collection of textiles, found objects, anything that might be turned into a sculpture or a mixed media work that could incorporate a combination of crochet with photopolymer printmaking. Judy likes to break down barriers and mix it up: call it hybrid, or mongrel.
Her eclectic eye and practice was on display in A Gentle Response, the companion show to the retrospective of sculptor Ian Gentle at Wollongong Art Gallery until March this year, featuring whimsical pieces made from television antennae and found objects.
“I save things for a rainy day,” she says. “I pull apart electronic components, washers, screws, anything from remotes and radios and store them in ice-cube trays.”
One thing she is not, is a domestic goddess: “The house is not so clean,” she says cheerfully.
Gentle was a key figure in Judy’s artistic evolution: as a single mum with no money to buy materials, she was liberated by his urging to use what she found.
“Ian started me on the path of being a maker, whether that was welding or knitting. The more digital our society becomes, the further we get from that chain.”
Now she belongs to a group of artists for whom frugality is a badge of honour, an artistic sensibility of recycling and making do that chimes with the times.
She will be exhibiting work in an upcoming show at Project Contemporary Artspace in Wollongong in May, but Judy being Judy, will defy convention by including masking tape, textiles, wire and plastic.
In 2025, she will co-curate an international show of artist’s books at the Clifton School of Arts. Meanwhile, she’ll keep trying to stop the roof from leaking at her studio at Barracks Art Studios Thirroul, where she’s worked since 1997. She’s weathered plenty of storms to get this far.
Read more about Judy's upcoming exhibition in 3 of a kind
