mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson

this occurrence across Moreton Bay. In dead littoral 2014, the artist cast bronze detritus collected along the beach — including a turtle skull, coral, shells and a marine buoy — in bronze. I have previously described the source of many of Watson's environmental-themed works: Watson herself is a collector: of detritus, maps, foliage and graphs, gathered from her wanderings through her garden, around the studio, along the Brisbane River, and from her travels north to the Sunshine Coast and east across the bay to Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), and digitally from the news and current affairs. These collections have influenced her work in more than just their physical presence. 17 Watson utilised scientific data collected at The University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station, during a residency on the island, in the heron island 2009 suite of prints. Here, sea-surface temperature graphs are combined with sonographs and other collected data in colourful etchings that offer emotive and artistic displays of the worrisome findings of pollution and temperature changes linked to global warming. spot fires, our country is burning now 2020 was made in the aftermath of the tragic Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20, when catastrophic infernos burnt 5.5 million hectares of land in many parts of Australia, people died, homes were destroyed and an estimated three billion animals (native and livestock) perished. 18 The title and subject of this work by Watson highlights the effects of climate change in the region and calls for Indigenous fire management systems to be implemented throughout the year. language | lingo The way in which Judy Watson describes her practice is profoundly lyrical, even poetically fluid, and she deliberately avoids using capital letters in the titles of her works. Given Watson's commitment to the feminism of her family matriarchs, this typographical decision might be interpreted as a nod to US black cultural critic and theorist bell hooks (1952–2021), whose renowned use of lower-case was intended to honour her great- grandmother and detract from any personal qualities of her writing. However, Watson's use of lower-case actually stems from an encounter with the poetry of EE Cummings (1894–1962) when studying literature in the 1980s. Cummings's exclusive use of lower-case captured Watson's imagination, who likens this aesthetic to metaphorically 'bringing everything down, and it being softer and more transient; a bleeding of the consciousness'. In the same way that Watson's paintings are never stretched, this de-capitalisation releases the work and its content. It also rejects the Western sense of hierarchy and the written constraints forced upon Indigenous languages by Western alphabets and punctuation. Waanyi language has become a feature within Watson's practice in recent years. A longheld project to create a Waanyi language dictionary has become a source of inspiration and reclamation. Gordon Hookey, a fellow Waanyi artist who coincidentally occupies the studio neighbouring Watson's in Yeronga, Brisbane, satirically refers to English as his second language — he 'just doesn't know how to speak the first one'. 19 The irony being that so many Indigenous Australians have been forcibly denied this human right due to decades of government policy designed to strip us of culture and language. This exhibition's title, 'mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri', is part of a verse composed in Waanyi by the artist's son, Otis Carmichael. Considering that the exhibition is an homage to the Isaacson family, which is matrilineal, it is important that her son, a young Waanyi man, is present in the project as well. According to Otis, 'this [poem] also shouldn't be taken as an example of language, but rather a poem that reflects my fragmented relationship with our language': 20 jala dayi kundana. mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri kiji kuluu. binbinka biijbi banja. now the tree is cut. tomorrow the tree grows stronger, fighting the axe that cut it. our people bite back. —Otis Carmichael 21 The contents of this poem are even more compelling after the landslide defeat of the 2023 Referendum, which sought to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The Watson family are survivors, and fighters. According to Watson, 'we are here because our ancestors have survived. The history lies within us.' 22 'mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson' is an homage to decades of creation, including new commissions and old favourites seamlessly sharing space: a testament to the longevity of one of Queensland's most significant artists. CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE LEFT heron island #6 , #10 , #15, #13 2009 63 62