Locked Up & Laughing

Locked Up & Laughing

By Artist Judith Parrott

In Locked Up and Laughing, Judith creates fantasies that come from within herself, constructed to tell a story of surviving pandemic lockdown on a Scottish island. Using photographic post-processing techniques, the images become an alternate reality, a temporary escape from the real world, where a focus on the natural environment counteracts a reality that has dismantled around us. Judith aims to explore one way of surviving life in lockdown isolation, and how this skill might be transferred to other situations.

ARTIST TALK

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To become a part of the Locked Up and Laughing story, take a ‘Selfie’ in nature, tell us where you are, and post it at https://www.facebook.com/groups/291527819338907

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Judith has 19 years experience as a photographer, collaborating with interesting people in fascinating places to explore the relevance of belonging for personal and environmental wellbeing; and starting conversations around language, culture and environment. Judith has exhibited internationally in 45 exhibitions including in the United Kingdom, America and Australia. She has held residencies in Canada, Australia, Scotland and Bolivia and been an Arts Fellow of the Australian Antarctic Division. Under the social isolation of pandemic lockdown she has turned the camera on herself.

Some career highlights include: an exhibition (Grounded) commissioned for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival (2014) and its subsequent Australian tour (2015 to 2019) which reached 18,110 visitors; development of this work into a projected photographic theatre set for a play, (Fuaigh, 2016), commissioned by National Theatre Scotland; introduction, development and facilitation of a relationship between Aboriginal artist, Fred Leone, and National Theatre Scotland to bring 16 Australian Aboriginal men to Glasgow to perform a Corroboree, which was double-billed with Fuaigh, to expand on themes introduced in the Grounded exhibition; recipient of the Colmcille 1500 Award, Scotland (2021); highly commended in the chairman’s professional artist category of the UK King Lear Art Prize (2020); finalist in Art and About Photographic Award, Australia (2019); finalist in the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture, Australia (2019); finalist in the Sydney International Head On Photographic Awards (2018 and 2019); finalist in the Scottish Photographic Portrait Awards (2018); a commission to produce an ABC Radio National 50-minute feature programme, using sound and prose from her exhibition Walking the Bridge (2010); and following an Australian Antarctic Division Arts Fellowship, a MAGSQ tour of the resulting exhibition from 2005 to 2012. Judith has been the recipient of numerous government, city council and private trust fund grants. Some example funders include: Festival 2014, Glasgow Commonwealth Games; Scottish Arts Council pARTners residency; ABC Radio National commission; Arts Fellow of the Australian Antarctic Division; Arts Queensland; Flying Arts Alliance; Ian Potter Cultural Trust; Hi-Arts; Brisbane City Council; Creative Scotland; Bòrd na Gàidhlig; National Theatre Scotland; Glasgow Merchant City Festival.

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For more information about Judy Parrott visit https://www.judithparrott.com/