"Re: New Wallace #7" marks the seventh collaboration between a Northern Irish artist and the prestigious Wallace Collection in London. Hertford House and its contents, inherited and augmented by Sir Richard Wallace, showcases an internationally renowned collection of fine and decorative art. With thanks to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (principle funder).

The residency provided Judith Waring with an opportunity to conduct research in situ. She has responded by making a series of re-imagined objects. This body of new work is a distillation of ideas which began with Les Wallaces, the Rococo drinking fountains gifted to the people of Paris by Richard Wallace in 1872. In many ways, Lisburn, with its 2 extant fountains, is pivotal to the creative narrative between Paris and London. Les Wallaces are made of cast-iron, painted green and provide drinking water.

They have four caryatids which support a cupola covered in 'dragons' scales'. They also feature depictions of dolphins and bulrushes. Wallace's name does not appear anywhere on his benefaction. The fountains have been re-viewed after a week's immersion in Wallace's private art collection. The public/private dichotomy along with the absence/presence of any water in "Quenched" offers a space in which to look at objects again, anew and from a number of standpoints. Materiality and process drive the new work - hessian, floral oases, jesmonite plaster, woodpecker feathers... Considerations of form and scale are investigated in the light of perceptions of the 'domestic'. Visual puns attempt to temper any legacy of art/history and 19th-century pre-occupations.

The Wallace Collection speaks to the here-and-now, the contemporary, as much as it is a window into the past.

There are days when objects speak as if under the impact of some sudden inspiration. In a language that is virtually incomprehensible they shout a message to us, the meaning of which becomes apparent only when it is too late. It is almost as if matter, receiving the gift of vision, were moved to prophesy - to no avail, of course, for when was a prophet ever listened to?

Julian Green, Paris, Eng. tr., Penguin Classics, 2020, p. 47, visiting Notre Dame in 1946.

This exhibition is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (principal funder).

Learn more about Judith Waring’s work by clicking the link below.

Judith Waring (b. Belfast) is a visual artist primarily concerned with 3-dimensional objects and with the sculptural. Considerations of materiality, process and scale drive her output. Her practice is research-led and project-focused. Visual markers of time, of place and in particular of boundaries are central to the concerns of her practice. The work is often site- or space-specific and informed by real and imagined narratives.

Judith Waring presents her work in the exhibition