Julie Ryder - Highly Commended

My objective for the “Transformation’ Nurture journal challenge was to really think about the prompt word and to interpret it using only the materials I had to hand.  Sometimes this was very literal, as in the case of ‘Pod’ and ‘Mold’, that were representational drawings, but at other times I tried to think more esoterically about the word and it’s relationship to ‘Transformation’.  For example, ‘Gold’ and ‘Transformation’ take inspiration from ancient alchemy and the quest to obtain gold from base metals. I used a variety of techniques from watercolour, pencil, collage, etching, deconstruction printing and cyanotype, which is a transformative process itself. I also tried to use up my stash of 1980’s Letraset and images of my works from old CAPO catalogues (seen in ‘Change’).  November is always a busy time of the year with pre-Christmas stock to make and Open Studios to organize, so at times days would go by without making any entries, but I loved immersing myself in the creativity of just making for fun and being as playful as I could about it.

Julie Ryder is a visual artist who works across the disciplines of textiles, drawing, digital printing, painting, glass and assemblage. Initially trained in science, she retrained as a textile designer in 1990, and over the past 30 years her arts practice has evolved in response to artistic opportunities and arts residencies, expanding her visual language by working with new media, new challenges and experiences. The materials Julie works with are an integral part of the message she wants to convey, leading to a cross-disciplinary approach in making work for exhibition. She draws inspiration from the history of botany and botanical collectors; gender/social inequity; cross-cultural exchange, objects as receptacles of stories and memory; and the use of natural materials in making art to uncover hidden stories that lie between the pages of history.
Julie has been the recipient of many awards, grants, commissions and residencies and exhibited in over 20 solo and 150 group exhibitions worldwide. Her work is represented in many public and private collections, including the NGA, NGV, NMA, MAAS, AGSA, BRAG, CSIRO, ANBG, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Megalo Archives, RMIT Archives.