The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Top Bottom salt pan 1992 wishbone heart 1992 Powder pigment and Powder pigment on pastel on canvas canvas 180x110cm 190x 148cm Collection : Art Gallery of Collection: The artist New South Wales, Sydney AUSTRALIA JUDY WATSON Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland, Australia in 1959. She gained a Diploma of Creative Arts from the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tasmania, Hobart, and a Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts from Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, where she held her first solo exhibition, 'Bath Icons', in 1986. The most recent of her numerous solo exhibitions has been 'Dropping intoWater Slowly', australian Girls Own Gallery, Canberra, 1993. Among the many group shows in which she has partic ipated since 1979 are 'Australian Student Printmakers Travelling Exhibition', Australia and San Francisco, 1983; 'Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Australia', Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, 1990; 'Through Women's Eyes', ATSIC Travelling Exhibition, 1991; and 'Crossroads- Towards ' a New Reality', National Museums of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan, 1992. In 1993 she exhibited in Brisbane, Victoria and at the 'ARCO International Exhibition of Con- temporary Art', Madrid. The Print Council of Australia commissioned her to produce a print in 1991 for its exhibition 'Transitional Times - The Approaching Fin de Siecle'. She was awarded the Verdaccio Studio grant for 1992 by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council. Her work is widely represented in public, university and corporate collections through- out Australia. JudyWatson has taught or been Artist-in-Residence at various institutions and is currently Art Tutor for the Flying Arts School. In 1993, she was also a guest lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney. Essentially, Judy Watson 's work is of country. Her country from her grandmother and great-grandmother. Her four paintings, ochre pit, wish bone heart, pel/e and salt pan, in particular, are intensely personal, being selected from a period of work inspired by a journey made with her family to Waanji country around Lawn Hill Gorge, north-west Queensland. Not merely landscapes, the paintings possess an added dimension, serving as diaries or journals of the traveller, and are scattered with fragments of memory overlaid as a series of almost imperceptible marks and meanders. These paintings of country are saturated with the presence of unseen lives where the past and present co-exist. Surrounding the pit in ochre pit, white 110 contours rake the land suggesting the hollowed earth created by human and other erosive forces. The artist uses materials that stimulate the earth's resources and avoids the artificial boundaries of a frame. The glow radiating from beneath the ochre pit implies the spiritual energy that particular ochres possess. Other elements of the country also have powers which may be invoked through human cultural activities. Judy Watson paints the country not from outside it but from within it. The most obviously autobiographical of the paintings, wish bone heart, places the artist in a metaphysical landscape, bound to it as a site of memory and history. A luminous outl ine of a female form emerges from darkness. Suggestive of trauma, the moody oppress ive background emphasises the fragile yet resilient spirit. Strange objects intrude upon the figure. wish bone heart suggests the artist's emergence from a period of personal conflict. Pelle is another word for skin and refers here to skin colour, so often the focus for derision of Aboriginal people. The hide is stretched across the surface of pelle, exposing its vulnerability. Wounding words scarify its surface. The surface of salt pan ripples, contorted by a submerged, turbulent force. A swirling pattern of dashes is etched, like the im- pressions of whirlwinds on desert sands. This has a multiplicity of meanings: perhaps the patterning of the fine hair of a newborn baby, dust haze rising off the land and obscuring the vision, or outlining the shape of the gorge. The landmass, commonly perceived as dry, crackling and salt- encrusted, is transformed in this saltpan into a velvety, sensuous, undulating landscape. Viewing the land from an aerial perspective also creates a softening effect. Like the saltpans, gorges, desert lands and waterways of the Outback, JudyWatson's works resonate with a subterranean energy and convey the spiritual and physical grandeur of a timeless and alluring country. As the titles of her works express, she goes into country and learns by listening and looking- a meditative process. Hetti Perkins