Gerry Judah is one of the leading installation artists in the UK. From the towering sculptures that form the showpiece at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed to the highly detailed and affecting display of Auschwitz at the Imperial War Museum in London, Judah’s installations have an emotional impact on the viewer that lingers long after they have been seen. Most recently Judah has won a £1.9m international commission with engineers Whitby Bird to design the first bridge over Cambridge’s River Cam in 40 years and is in the process of putting the finishing touches to the Central Sculpture for Goodwood House, West Sussex. This along with a footbridge by the River Thames at the Royal Arsenal, the entrance sculpture for the newly developed Brooklands Museum, a glass pavilion for the Lord Mayor’s State Coach and a major human rights sculpture for Sheffield is part of the current list of projects on Gerry Judah’s drawing board.

Born in Calcutta, Gerry Judah grew up in West Bengal before his family moved to London in the 1960’s. After leaving school at 16, Judah took on a variety of menial jobs before attending Goldsmiths College to study Fine Art. A first class honours degree took him to the Slade School for a distinguished postgraduate course in Sculpture. Still influenced by a fusion of temples and breathtaking monuments of his childhood in India, Judah left university dreaming of creating monumental, heroic sculptures, but projects such as these required funding.

To raise money to build his sculptures, Judah started working in the theatre, building scenery for the Royal Shakespeare Company, English National Opera, Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House and the National Theatre. This experience gave him the confidence to design productions himself, leading to a new direction in music videos working with Godley and Crème and many other ground-breaking directors. Next came sets for TV commercials working with David Bailey and Ridley Scott amongst others. Judah’s talent for art direction and model making was also in demand with advertising agencies where he created images for a number of award-winning campaigns such as Greenpeace’s anti-fur posters.

From advertising Judah progressed to movie projects such as Batman where he produced a dazzling line of architectural collages to create Gotham City. As rewarding as these projects were, Judah’s true passion was pure sculpture on a grand scale. Whilst Judah was working on the Spanish Pavilion for Seville’s Expo ’92, the Macau Pavilion for Lisbon’s Expo ’98 and the Millennium Dome, the Earl of March commissioned him to design a display for Ferrari at Goodwood. For this he created a huge, triumphal arch with a Formula One car hanging inside. The success of this design led to free rein for other marques such as Porsche, Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Renault, Ford and Rolls-Royce. These dazzling displays have come to represent the highlight of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the most important event in the automobile calendar.

Biography courtesy of the Royal British Society of Sculptors:
http://www.rbs.org.uk/cgibin/rbs_gallery.cgi?userid=316&letter=J&imageid=1&display=info