Judy Watson

Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland in 1959. She is a Brisbane-based, Waanyi artist. She was educated at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education Toowoomba, where she received a Diploma of Creative Arts in 1979; University of Tasmania where she received a bachelor's degree (1980–82); and Monash University where she completed a graduate diploma in 1986.

Judy Watson trained as a print-maker and her work in painting, video and installation often relies upon the use of layers to create a sense of different realities co-existing. As an Indigenous artist, the depiction of the land has an ongoing significance in her practice.

She represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1997, along with Yvonne Koolmatrie and Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

In 2005, for French architect Jean Nouvel's Musée du quai Branly she constructed a site-specific work for the building along with a number of other key Aboriginal artists. A film was made about the project, titled The French Connection.

Her work is often highly political, however it is rarely didactic. She describes her attitude to political art as follows:

"Art as a vehicle for invention and social change can be many things, it can be soft, hard, in-your-face confrontational, or subtle and discreet. I try and choose the latter approach for much of my work, a seductive beautiful exterior with a strong message like a deadly poison dart that insinuates itself into the consciousness of the viewer without them being aware of the package until it implodes and leaks its contents."

Themes

In the book on Watson's work, blood language (2009) her practice is divided into a number of themes: water, skin, poison, dust and blood, ochre, bones, driftnet. The list indicates the range of natural and cultural forms that underpin her practice.

Watson's recent work can be understood as part of the archival turn in contemporary art. She examines Indigenous Australian histories. For example, a preponderance of aboriginal blood (2005) was commissioned by the State Library of Queensland to celebrate the Queensland centenary of women’s suffrage and forty years of Aboriginal suffrage. The work uses documents from the Queensland State Archives about the how Aboriginal people were precluded from voting. Before suffrage was granted in 1965, eligibility to vote was based on the percentage of Aboriginal blood, hence Watson’s title her series. The series was recently acquired by Tate Modern, London.

Other series that examine history and the archive include the holes in the land (2015). This series of six engravings is about the loss of Aboriginal cultural patrimony. In four of the six images Aboriginal cultural objects held in the British Museum are depicted. The title underscores the damage done to the land—the shadow, depression or blot on the landscape—removal has caused.

Solo exhibitions

2016 the names of places, Green Screen, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

2015 the holes in the land; heron island suite, experimental beds, Toowoomba Regional Gallery

2014 sacred ground beating heart / experimental beds / heron island suite, Noosa Regional Gallery

2013 experimental beds, Brenda May Gallery, Sydney

2012 shell, Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

experimental beds, University of Virginia, USA and grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane.

2011 - 12 waterline, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Embassy of Australia, Washington DC, USA.

2011 heron island suite, Touring Regional Galleries in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland.

2010 heron island suite, grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane.

2009 - 12 heron island, University of Virginia, USA; grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane; and touring across Western Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland.

2009 bad and doubtful debts, Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

heron island, University of Queensland Art Museum; University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Major group exhibitions

First Asia-Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, 1993

Antipodean Currents: Ten Contemporary Artists from Australia, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1995

A Gift to the World: The Australian Indigenous Art Commission at the Musée du quai Branly, Australian Indigenous Art Commission, 2005

Cultural Warriors, Indigenous Art Triennale, National Gallery of Australia, 2007

Public collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales

National Gallery of Australia

Queensland Art Gallery

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Tate Modern, London

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart

Awards and nominations

Moet and Chandon Fellowship 1995

National Gallery of Victoria’s Clemenger Art Award 2006

Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award 2006