MADA Art Forum: Judy Watson

Judy Watson
Born Mundubbera, Queensland 1959
Lives and works Brisbane, Queensland

A direct descendant of the Waanyi clan, Judy Watson grew up in Brisbane and attended the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba, where she gained a Diploma of Creative Arts in 1979. After moving to Hobart in 1980, she graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1982. In 1990, she travelled to her grandmother's country in north-west Queensland to learn more about her family's connections to Riversleigh Station and Lawn Hill Gorge, and her grandmother's stories. Watson's matrilineal link to the country of her ancestors has always been central to her printmaking  and  painting. The hidden histories of Indigenous experience on the colonial frontier, particularly those of women, continue to inspire her. Often using natural materials found in situ, Watson colours her canvases while they lie wet on the ground, allowing the pigments to follow the contours beneath. She leaves them unstretched  and unframed, so that they remain as objects, rather than images, when pinned to the wall. Through her art, Watson repatriates the human artefacts and objects of collected cultures in museum storehouses, and reveals the ‘skeletons' in colonial ‘closets'.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Judy Watson: the scarifier, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016; sacred ground beating heart / experimental beds / heron island suite, Noosa Regional Gallery, Queensland, 2013; and heron island suite, touring regional galleries in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, 2010; and Judy Watson: Selected works 1990-2005, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2005.

Selected group exhibitions include: Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, Harvard Art Museum, USA, 2015; Artists and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past, TATE Britain, London, 2015; 18th Biennale of Sydney: all our relations, Sydney, 2012; National Indigenous Art Triennial: Culture Warriors,  National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2009; Beyond the Pale: Contemporary Indigenous Art, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2000; Fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Judy Watson, 47th Venice Biennale, Venice, 1997; Aratjara:  Art  of  the  First  Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, and Hayward Gallery, London, 1994; Australian Perspecta, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993; The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993; and Unfamiliar Territory: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art,  Art  Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1992.

Judy Watson is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane (for prints and artist books).

milanigallery.com.au
tolarnogalleries.com
grahamegalleries.com

^{Image: Judy Watson, From dusk till dawn: five Brisbane shields 2003, ink, chinagraph pencil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Carl Warner}