Judy Watson

Judy Watson
Education	University of Tasmania, Monash University
Known for	Print-making, painting, installation
Movement	Indigenous art, contemporary Australian art

Judy Watson is a multi-media artist who works in print-making, painting, video and installation.

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; the University of Tasmania where she received a bachelor's degree (1980–82); and Monash University where she completed a graduate diploma in 1986.

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."

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 way 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 in London.

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