A preview of Judy Watson 's show at the Aboriginal Artists Gallery was held at Umbrella Studio in Townsville. Works ranged from large paintings on paper using acrylic, oil, shellac and bitumen, to lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, collage and drawing.
Judy has exhibited consistently over the past eight years in group shows as well as in national competitions and most recently was represented by a strong work in the National Women's Art Award at the Centre Gallery, Surfers Paradise. This, however, is her first one-person show and it is interesting that at this point in her career she has chosen to place her work in the context of urban Aboriginal art.
Discussion with the artist made it clear that this was a conscious decision on her part, despite professional advice from one well-known Sydney gallery that the work was "too sophisticated" for such a context. This association, it was suggested, could be detrimental to her career in mainstream art.
The work is sophisticated, both technically and conceptually. Solitary and occasionally double figures are evoked in shadowed form; there is a feeling of contained or trapped energy. Suggestion rather than obvious statement enables the work to make comment on a number of levels: spiritual, social, psychological. Titles such as Touching my Mother's Blood, Enclosed Figure, and My Guardians, make more specific reference to issues of Aboriginality. One work incorporates the statement, "You can breed out the colour of being Aboriginal, but not the spirit". On the whole the work has a substance and weight which is understandably sombre, coloured with moments of irony and humour in, for example, the Bath Icon series where the artist plays with religious metaphor and chuckles about