Judy Maxwell-McNicol

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

In her practice, Judy Maxwell-McNicol explores the human condition through a queer perspective, using humour not just to entertain, but to confront, complicate and reframe. Rooted in personal experience and research, her work engages with the cultural and emotional legacies of shame - particularly those tied to gender, sexuality and the body. Drawing on the subversive potential of laughter and how it has historically been used in feminist and queer art, she aims to reposition shame not as something to hide, but as something that can be witnessed, shared, and ultimately transformed. Combining ready-made objects with hand-made, often labour-intensive craft, she disrupts our relationships with familiar, often domestic materials by reworking or recontextualising them in unexpected, playful, and often absurd ways. Through these material interventions, she creates alternative ways of challenging and reconfiguring the relationships between the social and the symbolic, frequently using laughter as a tool for disruption and transformation. Developed through an ongoing exploration of how shame is enforced, internalised, and performed, her work aims not to resolve shame but to activate it - to invite it into conversation with laughter, parody, and pleasure. Through her work, Judy hopes to create experiences that are disarming and affecting - like the sensation of being tickled, where laughter erupts from something that also causes discomfort. She wants to create moments of release: a...

Artwork