#watson.jenny

[aamjp]

In Residence:

Jenny's away today, but here's a sketch she gave me of '60 dolly bird' which (I think) is in her show The Fabric of Fantasy' currently at @mca_australia. 

The other image (swipe 👉🏼) is a painting I gave Jenny. It's intended as a kind of tribute to her need to give Patti Smith something, anything on seeing her play in London in 1978, and so tearing a page from her journal and handing it to her on stage :)

[aamjp]

A painting I gave to Jenny 3/8/17

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[aamjp]

REVIEW

Jenny Watson: Chronicles

Exhibition focussing on the focusing on the prevalence of text throughout Watson’s practice, at the Griffith University Art Gallery from 14 July to 13 September 2016.

arranged chronologically, mas o menos, commencing with the large and small Mont Albert house paintings of 1976-7 and traversing four decades to a number of fabric paintings with accompanying text panels and sculptural elements of 2016 

fairly evenly spread across the decades, however

shows the separation of text within her work from being within the same plane as the image (as in the house images), to being scribbled over and around the image, and, finally, on to to detached panels

similarly there is movement of the text from from being a textual signifier of the image to something which has little direct relation to the image however establishes a sort of interdependence with the image   

as this occurs there is a increasing emphasis on signification over representation and, arguably, the text becomes more specific in its significance than the image (at least to a viewer disregarding any autobiographical element) 

I hadn’t realised how good a story teller Jenny is (despite having been on the end of a few); there’s something real vulnerability and bravery and, above all, an empathy within her words

Panel Discussion: Jenny Watson's Material Concerns

Panel discussion of the art historical links to the autobiographical and confessional aspects of Jenny Watson’s work at Griffith University Art Gallery on 30 August 2016. 

Panel comprised Dr Julie Fragar, Dr Sally Butler (Associate Professor in Art History, UQ), and Professor Andrew McNamara (Creative Industries Faculty, QUT), and was chaired by Dr Rosemary Hawker.

 biography as a type of medium

Richter’s photo paintings grant a latitude which permits  the abstract works 

in JW’s work, the contrast between the house and naive paintings  permits a comparison and self-reflexive examination with biography being the medium 

Separation of text and image allowing the viewer to enter the works

JW mentioned this as being risky in 1980 but she’s talked a lot about being a post-conceptual artist; the separation of text and image was a sort of trope within conceptual art, wasn’t it? 

anyway, JW positions herself as a post-conceptual artist — see: An original oil painting (black + white) (for Nick Cave) — but Rosemary suggests that the works push us away from that description (or is it ‘prescription’?) because of the disjunction between the text and the images

similarly, despite it being a monographic exhibition of deeply personal works (Jenny stated that she was “playing out the possibilities of the artist”) there’s an oscillation between autobiography and biography

It’s these disjunctions and oscillations which permit the viewer to enter the works via "space between the banality and shockingness of the text”

reality and authenticity

"the strangeness in the familiar"

"reality epiphanies"

separation of image and text is closer to lived experience