Judith Dean’s paintings question the ways in which we look at images and art. Using her non-writing hand to reflect on the control exerted by the conscious mind, Dean creates works that explore perspective and the singularity of the mind’s eye.
Ideas of illusion—abstract, figurative, stylised and otherwise—both inhabit and frame her compositions as receding stages or gallery-like spaces. Drawing on the contingency of memory, Dean incorporates found images from the internet, personal photographs, a 17th-century Chinese painting manual, and the practice of Hua Gong to construct pictorial environments that open up possibilities for exchange.
Walls, floors and ceilings emerge; separated rooms unfold from blind alleys, dead ends and shifting horizons. The digital world operates as a multiverse of images in which attention is constantly directed toward what is narrow, commercial or politically expedient. By layering multiple images within a single painting, Dean disrupts this focus—prompting a heightened awareness of both the mind’s internal control mechanisms and those imposed by society.
Her images draw from diverse cultural, environmental, historical and unknown sources, assembled into distinct yet interrelated worlds that feel at once staged and inevitable.
miart 2026 17th-19th April 2026 South Wing of Allianz MiCo @miartmilano
Shahin Zarinbal (Berlin) and South Parade (London) miart, Milan (April 2026) – Booth E06
About the artist
Judith Dean (b.1965, Billericay, UK) lives and works in London. She graduated from Wimbledon School of Art, London (1988) and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1993).
Recent solo exhibitions include New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace? (South Parade, UK, 2025); One Thing and the Others (Bodenrader, Chicago, USA, 2024); New Builds / Bilds (The Image in Perspective) (South Parade, London, UK, 2023); and June Art Fair with South Parade (Basel, CH, 2023). Recent two-person exhibitions include Room Constant (Kurtkubin, Mexico City, MX, 2025); Of Strangers (Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin, DE, 2024); and Stolen Hours (12.26, Dallas, USA, 2024). Recent group exhibitions include Art Cologne with Shahin Zarinbal (Cologne, DE, 2025); A separate place between the thought and felt (South Parade, London, UK, 2024); the no plan plan (JVDW Gallery, Düsseldorf, DE, 2024); Inaugural Group Exhibition (Bodenrader, Chicago, USA, 2023); The World Was All Before Them (TULCA, Galway, IE, 2022); A gathering (Project 78 Gallery, St. Leonards-on-Sea, UK, 2022); and The Void (White Columns Online, New York, USA, 2021).
Dean was the winner of the Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2005) and served as Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts at UWE Bristol (2008–2024).
