Art
Book Details

Judy Watson

Blood Language

Judy Watson and Louise Martin-Chew

A beautifully illustrated pictorial exploration of some of Judy Watson's seminal canvases, works on paper, sculptural projects and artist's books.

Opinion

'Seductively beautiful art, with political punch.'
Sasha Grishin, Canberra Times, 11/07/09

'It is [the] spiritual and metaphysical quality in Judy Watson's art that is one of its most endearing properties.'
Sasha Grishin, Canberra Times, 11/07/09

About this Title

'Aboriginal artists mapping our countries, exploring the new, recovering old known ways. Charting our existence, defending our territories, proving our ancestral connections'
from 'holding the map upside down', Judy Watson, 1999

Judy Watson is one of Australia's leading contemporary artists. Her art explores territory that includes the dispossessed Indigenous Australians with whom she shares a family history and heritage. Judy Watson's art is intense and sublime in its physicality.

blood language is a beautifully illustrated pictorial exploration of some of Judy Watson's seminal canvases, works on paper, sculptural projects and artist's books. Judy Watson imparts the artist's ideas and writer Louise Martin-Chew gives another insight into the artist's practice.

Water, skin, poison, dust & blood, ochre, bones and driftnet are defining themes in an empathetic art that seeks to find a broader geography of belonging. Watson creates highly sophisticated works of beauty that are subtly political and intensely personal.

About the Author

Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland, in 1959. An inveterate traveller, she has lived in many parts of Australia and undertaken numerous overseas residencies. Watson has had solo exhibitions all over Australia and internationally. In 1997 she represented Australia at the Venice Biennale. She is a recipient of several major contemporary art awards including the Moët & Chandon Fellowship in 1995, the National Gallery of Victoria's Clemenger Award in 2006 and, in the same year, the Work on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Major public art projects on high-profile sites have been undertaken by Watson, and in 2006 two of her works were permanently installed within the architectural fabric of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Louise Martin-Chew is an arts writer who has worked in the visual arts industry for more than twenty years. She is a former editor of Art and Australia magazine and is now a regular contributor to The Australian and other national art magazines, catalogues and books. She was essayist for the 2008 Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarships and co-writer of The Heart of Everything: The Art and Artists of Bentinck and Mornington Islands. She lives in Brisbane.

978-0-522-85658-3