My country, I still call Australia home: Contemporary art from Black Australia

Judy, you were brought up away from your family's country in north- western Queensland. What did travelling to Waanyi country mean for you and your work as an artist? After trips to see family in Mt Isa, or places further west in the Northern Territory where my grandfather was working on stations, I would sit and look out the windows of my primary school and imagine I was there. I would see red earth, yellow and green spinifex grass, trees with patches of shade, kangaroos and rocky hills, dust storms and open skies. I was longing for something, other than my immediate surroundings, outside school. We did go fishing at the Gregory River when I was young. I remember my grandmother, Grace Isaacson, showing us a Johnson freshwater crocodile and we found a turtle shell. I remember rushing water at the crossing, the blue, green water and the lush vegetation, cabbage tree palms, paperbark trees, fig trees overhanging rivers. I went back in my early twenties and the rivers still had a strong pull of memory. Then I returned with my family in 1990 and was shown many things — freshwater mussel shell middens, painted and engraved rock art, stone tools, bush foods . . . There were large termite mounds like sentinels, strange rocks inlaid with fossils, ochre that had been carried down the creek bed. The subterranean water (dinosaur water) bubbled up from the limestone, spiralling up as springs at Louie Creek or as tiny threads of dots across the water at Lawn Hill Gorge. The rocky gorge continued on below the water line and I imagined the shape of the basin beneath us. Going back to country with my family was tremendously inspiring for me as an artist and Aboriginal person. Being shown important sites by family members . . . talking, laughing, fishing, hearing the echoes of the past across the waters. I wrote these words in 2004: when you walk in that country / the earth is beating, pulsating / heat, blood, heart / things are hidden / like the bones of the people who have been there before / you are walking in their footprints 'Landscape' and 'country' have very different origins. How do they work in your paintings? I don't call my works landscapes as this carries notions of European perspectives, of looking out. I imagine my works looking above and below and through earth, water, sky. It's as if the surface layer is peeled away. Does being connected to country inflect how you make art today? When I travel I carry my country and culture within me. It is the touchstone that informs my practice. I don't necessarily always make work that references this subject, but it is part of who I am and how I see the world. My immediate environment, what I read or see or listen to or experience, also affects and informs my work. As an artist, I throw out my net and gather imagery for closer inspection, discarding and isolating — like mining for gold. Interviewed by Julie Ewington, CURATORIAL Manager, Australian Art, March 2013 JudyWatson Waanyi people an interview Judy Watson Waanyi people QLD sacred ground beating heart 1989 Natural pigments and pastel on canvas Purchased 1990. The 1990 Moët & Chandon Art Acquisition Fund 37