Judy Watson’s (b.1959) matrilineal family is from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. Her art making processes have evolved through her research into Indigenous histories in particular places and moments of time. Watson is able elicit from her layering of materials, washes and rubbing of pigments ‘cultural memory tied to a place’.
Watson’s works in Trace are Between Trees and Indigo Board 48. Both are small delicate works, one painted with ochre, the other with washes of indigo. The space between trees is a space of witness, a space of seeing and not being seen, a space of shadows. In Indigo Board 48, indigo runs and seeps, and in places rubbed back into the board, creating places of feeling.
Exhibiting extensively since the 1980s, Watson has had a prolific artistic career. She co-represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale and won the Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in 2006. She was also the recipient of the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2006 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award. In 2011, Watson’s exhibition waterline was shown at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC, and in 2012, she exhibited in the Sydney Biennale. In 2018, the Art Gallery of New South Wales staged a major exhibition of her work titled the edge of memory. Watson has also received commissions for several public art projects across Australia, including fire and water at Reconciliation Place in Canberra in 2007, ngarunga nangama: calm water dream at 200 George St in Sydney in 2016, and in the same year, tow row for the Gallery of Modern Art’s 10th Anniversary in Brisbane. A significant solo exhibition of her work opened in March 2020 at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. This this year Watson’s work Strong and Weak like Water was part of the the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Korea. Watson’s work is included in several significant Australian and international collections, including all of Australia’s state institutions, the National Gallery of Australia, the Tokyo National University of Technology, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the British Museum, and MCA/ TATE. Watson is an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, and in 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Art History by the University of Queensland.
