JUDY WATSON'S strong lifetime of artistry. Bold large scale and intimate. Free, open every day

National Indigenous Times

Phoebe Blogg - March 26, 2024

'mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson', is a new exhibition of works by Brisbane-based Waanyi artist, Judy Watson, at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Inspired by a poem in Waanyi language by Watson's son Otis Carmichael, the exhibition's title translates to "tomorrow the tree grows stronger".

Presented in Queensland Art Galleries (QAG's) central exhibition spaces and Watermall, mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri' will run until August 11, having opened on March 23.

Watson told National Indigenous Times that the exhibition "walks the participant through identity, history, politics, feminism, environmentalism and it recreates my journey as a young woman; Dealing with stereotypes of who it was to be a woman, who we are as Aboriginal people - if we do or do not look the part."

"It also covers the history of my matrilineal line in particular. My grandmother, great and great-great grandmother and how they were able to survive in this country," she said.

"My job as an artist is to uncover those histories, rattle the bones of the archive and lift those histories up to show the viewer."

QAGOMA director Chris Saines said the gallery is proud to be able to celebrate the Watson's storytelling.

"Since the early 1980s, Watson has drawn powerful stories and profound truths from the Country of her matrilineal family and fashioned them into fluid and ethereal works of art," he said.

Watson's history with QAGOMA initially began with her work being featured in the inaugural Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1993. Her enormously scaled bronze net sculpture tow row at the entrance to Gallery of Modern Art was commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in 2016.

Today, Watson's mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri is a comprehensive survey of the renowned Queensland artist's incisive meditations on colonial, social and ecological concerns. It is also her most extensive solo exhibition to date.

The exhibition includes 130 works, across painting, prints, sculpture, installation and video, from an artistic practice centred on truth-telling around the environment, historical government policy affecting Indigenous Australians, and institutions that collect First Nations cultural material and remains.

'Mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson' is accompanied by a major publication that includes contributions from exhibition curator Katina Davidson; stories transcribed from conversations with Watson's family members; a poetic response by Jazz Money; and an international perspective on Watson's work from Tarah Hogue, Curator, Indigenous Art, at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada.

This career-survey exhibition, curated by Katina Davidson, curator of Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA, highlights Watson's deeply considered practice and the subjects that have resonated in her work across four decades: research of cultural objects in collecting institutions, feminism, truth-telling, ensuring the presence of Indigenous Australian stories and culture, and a commitment to the environment and country.

The exhibition was several years in the making and is the most expansive survey of Watson's career to date. The exhibition draws together works including significant paintings, sculptures and installations, the largest collection of Watson's video works ever shown, and artist books and prints dating from the early 1980s through to the present," said Davidson.

"Central to the exhibition are more than 35 of Watson's large unstretched canvases, impressively and seductively charged with her signature treatmen