in search of blood language

surveillance 2009

When I grew up in Brisbane, I thought of my Aboriginality as being tied to my mother’s family in Mt Isa. Because of who I do and don’t look like, when I’m traveling overseas, people assume that I am from the next country – never the one I am from. While I can get around in a couple of other countries using their languages, I don’t know my family’s indigenous language, my ‘blood language’.

JUDY WATSON 2008

Experiencing a painting, drawing or installation by Judy Watson, is to be immersed in a flood of brilliant colour and exquisite detail to reveal the gravity of history, its interpretation and personal resonances. Judy Watson is a celebrated Australian artist who creates beautiful and personal work that often delves into the indigenous history and experience of Australia, which also forms part of her own family story.

The new book, “blood language” is a beautiful collection and examination of many works by this artist and a practice that has been evolving for over twenty years. It captures an exchange between the artist and arts writer, Louise Martin-Chew, who parallels the beauty and contemplation of the artwork with elegant and insightful prose. She has contributed her expertise in a field that has seen her as the former editor of ‘Art and Australia’ magazine, and frequent contributor to ‘The Australian’ and many other art publications. Judy Watson was kind enough to recently answer some questions I wanted to ask her about “blood language” and how it sits within her art practice.

“blood language” is a very thoughtfully and poetically executed book – how did the idea of bringing it about come to light? Were you approached by Louise Martin-Chew or was this a project you initially had wanted to pursue?

I was approached by Tracy O’Shaughnessy, publisher from MUP who had been thinking of Louise Martin-Chew as a writer that I could potentially work with on a book of my artwork.

The book is divided under the headings, ‘water’, ‘skin’, ‘poison’, ‘dust & blood’, ‘ochre’, ‘bones’ and ‘driftnet’ – fundamental physical and conceptual themes embedded in your work. I imagine that the process of surveying your extensive body of work and examining it in order to arrive at these concepts and then to group artworks accordingly was quite intense – was this a collaborative process with Louise? If so, what was the nature of the collaboration? Did it inspire debate or any re-examination of past works?

Tracy actually suggested chapters to divide the book into sections and asked for my ideas. I immediately wrote down these words, dust became dust and blood, as Louise and I trawled through images to fit the sections of the book. Finding the images was a collaborative process, along the way, images of work floated between the chapter headings and new works emerged to join the fray.

The quote above which opens the book and begins to unfurl its story about your practice, mentions the title and that you cannot communicate using your family’s Indigenous language – is your practice then a way you can visually and sensorially discover and recover a sense of that language for yourself, family and community?

Yes, that is a good way of putting it, the artist’s work as retrieval of culture and family and community. I heard the term ‘blood language’ used by an African man on television, talking about some tourists who were visiting his village. He said it was good because the villagers were learning to communicate in English and he had previously only known his ‘blood language’, the language of his people.

The majority of images in the book are accompanied by captions all in your own words derived from notebooks, writing, catalogues and exhibition notes. Some captions describe factual and historical details, others are reflective statements of thoughts and emotions, and then there are meditations in poetry. The titles of your work, always in lower case, are also very evocative and specific. Are words and writing an integral part of your art-making process, documentation and final presentation of work?

Yes, I often write both before, during and after the making of artworks. I note down ideas I pick up from billboards, see in newspapers, listen to on the radio, literally dream of or read in books or from personal experience. I pose questions to myself in the making of my work, and sketch out various scenarios from which to take the work to the next stage and finally its resolution.

I recently experienced your exhibition, ‘bad and doubtful debts’ at Milani Gallery, Woolloongabba and was surprised by the figurative elements of cargo ships and boats floating on the vivid wash of your pigment soaked, un-stretched canvases. Earlier this year you completed a residency at the UQ Research Centre on Heron Island during the news of oil spills in Moreton Bay and intercepted boats of asylum seekers approaching the Australian coast – it seems that these events, perhaps heightened for you due to your location at the time, inspired this development in your new paintings. Does this reflect a process of art-making that is continuously regenerating a personal aesthetic language that layers your past and evolving present?

Yes, I had asked Hamish Sawyer from Milani Gallery to gather research for me on these particular events and others. I also collected articles from newspapers and the internet and wrote down transcripts from radio news regarding the oil spill from the Pacific Adventurer and the burning boat, siev 36 and interception of asylum seekers to Australia. I am interested in the layering of these events and how they inform my present tense. Figurative elements were more prominent in my past practice and might be creeping back in for clarity when reenacting specific events in our shared history, in order to tell the story.

There are many Australian and international locations that you have inhabited as a traveler and as an artist-in-residence that have informed your practice. Is there anywhere you would particularly like to experience in the near future?

Anywhere is fine with me, known or unknown, as a travel destination, especially if I can take my children with me and share the experience with them (as long as they are not in any danger).

What projects can we look forward to seeing from you next? As a result of the Heron Island Residency I will produce a body of work to be shown at the University of QLD Art Museum later this year.

I am working on a suspended sculptural form with Urban Art Projects to be part of this exhibition. I will also be making large works on paper responding to the early French explorers’ drawings of marine creatures from the Pacific and Australian waters for a group exhibition titled: Littoral, which will be shown at Carnegie Gallery in Hobart next year.