Behind the Curtain - From the Outside Looking In

Behind the Curtain I & II- From the Outside Looking In 2024 -Installation can be seen at The Acme Propeller Factory - Window Gallery until 3rd November up to 10pm each day. Address is 165 Childers Street , Deptford, London SE8 4JR

Judith Walker envisages her Behind the Curtain installation as portraying the experience of children playing hide and seek behind the curtains. They are in the in between place. Behind there is the cold, dark, scary outside world. The light from passing cars and street signs are projected onto the curtain lining, which has gathered dust. If the children peep through the curtains they can see the safety of the adults in a warm living room.

Walker perceives this work as representing a universal curtain. It could be the fine drapes inside a palace, the neat pleats of an average living room or a sheet hung up in a squat or a refugee camp.

Walker imagines that the folds of the curtain represent infinity and that they can draw the viewer in. That maybe they could be transported or transformed into a way of seeing the world differently. Though Walker leaves this up to the viewer’s own imagination she does not want to direct or anticipate their thought’s. As they stand in the inbetween place behind the curtain, she is inviting them to step into the infinity of the folds.

For this show Walker has reconfigured her original Behind the Curtain 2014 installation into two new pieces Behind the Curtain – From the Outside Looking In I and II 2024. The original work had been created as the subject for her dissertation for a research Master’s degree at Birkbeck College. It has been on her studio wall for 10 years as she could not bear to take it down, believing there was no way to preserve the work. So, getting the opportunity to repurpose it for the Acme Window Gallery space was a perfect opportunity to save the work and get back her studio wall. The transitioning of the work from one piece to two became a creative process in itself.

The new version has added another layer to the viewer’s experience of the piece. The audience will be in a different space further back from the outside looking in, through the black grid created by the window panes. The viewer is being invited to look into the window in order to engage with the art and the other artists within the building. This experience fulfils Walker’s intentions that her curtain should create a universal, democratic space.