The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...
Judy Watson's diaphanous paintings seem to have been created in the midst of the heat hazes they depict. The imagery floats above a ground of burnt browns, sun bleached oranges and blood red expanses, shifting and pulsating with the hallucinatory energy, the drama and the history of the land. Her work emerges out of a relationship between her family history, a more general history of Aboriginal identity and politics, and her intuitive use of abstract painting itself.
Judy Watson's paintings are autobiographical. In discussing the art of Louise Bourgeois, Stuart Morgan comments that "autobiography allows the past to orient the future , permits the autobiographer to solve problems about her own nature, extends her power of expression, gives rise to questions about the analysis of self, broadens and continues to broaden the scope of the experiment and allows new questions to be broached".! For Judy Watson, this use of the autobiographical results in an art that is quite distinct from that of Bourgeois, but which nevertheless is underpinned by a conscious research into the self combined with an acknowledgement of the political implications of that process. Like many other urban Aboriginal artists , Watson has embarked on a process of self-education about her Aboriginal heritage. She has researched it, travelled to her 'country', spent time with her family, in order to understand more fully the history of her inherited culture and the genocide and personal tragedy that Aboriginal people have endured.
Watson is a direct descendant of the Wanyi clan of north western Queensland. During June and July 1991 she made a trip to Riversleigh Station near Mt Isa where she spent time with her grandmother, who was taken from... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline