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Judy Watson's Artist in Residence at Griffith University culminated in an exhibition of work produced over the three month period of her stay.
Judy Watson has been described as an artist for whom, "being a woman and being Aboriginal are the departure points for exploring the experience ... of isolation and confinement within the skin of physical reality" (Eyeline 9, 35). It hardly needs mentioning that to know something about the artist is to know something about her work. And even though Judy herself will testify to the various levels of interpretation of her art, as a Goori male I can but merely approach an understanding.
Her work dares you to apply your preconceived notions about art to the creations of the Black urban artist. It allows you interpretation but interpretation solidly bound within the expressed experiences of this Aboriginal woman who carries a past conceived in the womb of truth. So, far from being a "what you see is what you get" frame, it is work which moves one's mind to entertain a sense of latent force and energy linked to an undoubted affirmation of culture.
Judy's A Sacred Place for these Bones (lithograph) could remind one of Platapus Lives Alone by Kamilaroi artist Biggibilla, if only in the sense that each captures the same vibrant tensions of their Aboriginality. For there is a candidness about Judy, and in like manner she invites you to appreciate her work. It is this same straight-forwardness which the Brisbane Black community has come to associate with her as much as her bone chamber imagery which recurs throughout this exhibition. Consequently, contrasting images using the bone chamber motif abound: escape/entrapment, life/spirit, alone/togetherness