Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained via grahame galleries + editions. Gallery Address: 1 Fernberg Road, Milton, QLD 4064, Brisbane, Australia
PO Box 515, Paddington, QLD 4064, Brisbane, Australia
P: +61(0)7 3369 3288
M: +61 (0)7 412 286264
E: info@grahamegalleries.com
www.grahamegalleries.com Shipped to the UK on 10/11/2012.
Event Date 7/5/2013
Author: rachel hand

Context (CMS Context)
(Bio) As taken from https://www.mup.com.au/items/9780522856583
Judy Watson was born in Mundubbera, Queensland, in 1959. An inveterate traveler, 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.
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 artists books. Judy Watson imparts the artists ideas and writer Louise Martin-Chew gives another insight into the artists 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.

Event Date 7/5/2013
Author: rachel hand

Description (CMS Description)
Print series by Judy Watson, titled 'experimental beds'. # 1 to # 6, 2012, edition 2/20.

"The architectural drawing is of The Rotunda, First Floor Plan."
From ABOUT experimental beds by NOREEN GRAHAME, [np date, ?2012] See https://kluge-ruhe.org/collaboration/judy-watson-experimental-beds/ [accessed 18/2/2019]

F: Handwritten in pencil in the left hand bottom corner of the print is '2/20', followed by 'experimental beds 6' in the centre and 'Judy Watson 2012' in the bottom right hand corner. A blindstamp is visible in the bottom right hand corner. Condition: Very Good.
Event Date 7/5/2013
Author: rachel hand

Context (CMS Context)
"In 2009 Watson visited the University of Virginia where she saw Jefferson’s architectural drawings in the exhibition Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece curated by Richard Guy Wilson. She returned to UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection as an artist-in-residence in 2011, funded by a grant from the UVA Arts Council.

Watson felt that “having learned something of Jefferson’s history, interwoven with relationships with his white family and African American enslaved women and children also considered to be part of his blood family, I decided to use these architectural drawings as the bones for a series of works that investigated these relationships.”
During her residency Watson visited Monticello to augment her research. Leni Sorensen, an African American Research Historian, showed her the gardens and inadvertently gave her the title for her suite of etchings. Sorensen explained Jefferson’s practice of experimentation with seeds and plants he sourced from Europe to China. From the American continent, seeds were planted from those collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Seeds from plants that had originally arrived with enslaved people from the Congo were also planted in Monticello’s vegetable gardens. Jefferson assess the crops for their usefulness and for their adaptability to Virginia’s climactic conditions and Sorenson described the gardens as Jefferson’s “experimental beds.”

For Watson this was the perfect title for her body of work. It also emcompassed “Jefferson’s pursuits across the cultural divide ‘between the sheets’ with the enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, whose descendants are both Jefferson’s and Hemings’ family.” This union between a white man and a black woman, resulting in children of mixed descent, is reflected in Watson’s own family in Australia, where the matrilineal line of her family is Australian Aboriginal, and the patrilienal line is white European.

At Monticello, Watson also met an archaeologist working at the Mulberry Row dig and photographed soem
of the artifacts unearthed that day. In her etchings, Watson incorporates drawings from these photographs as well as drawings of artifacts in Montello’s collection and of vegetables grown in Jefferson’s “experimental beds.”
Watson was given access to Jefferson’s architectural drawings of the Academical Village by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. She commenced the initial transfer of Jefferson’s architectural drawings and other visual material onto etching plates in September 2011 with Basil Hall Editions in Darwin. Plates and proofs were sent to UVA for her residency at UVA in October 2011, where she worked with Professor Deane Dass and advanced printmaking students on fleshing out the proofs. The plates were returned to Watson in Brisbane for futher work and then sent back to Basil Hall Editions for proofing and editioning.

The project was co-published by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Judy Watson and grahame galleries + editions in Brisbane. The suite has been acquired by a number of private and public collections in the United States and Australia, including the Library of Congress.'

From ABOUT experimental beds by NOREEN GRAHAME, [np date, ?2012] See https://kluge-ruhe.org/collaboration/judy-watson-experimental-beds/ [accessed 18/2/2019]


A: Printed on cream-coloured paper. A black silhouette of a male figure and probably a female figure are portrayed with their backs facing each other on a background which consists of a rust coloured circle. The circle is possibly a blueprint of the library in print D seen from above. B: Printed on cream-coloured paper. The print has a yellow-ochre background on which a blueprint of an architectural structure has been printed in rust-coloured lines. The top and bottom of the image have a black band running horizontally across the entire length. The band consists of numerous vertically aligned nails or chisels. C: Printed on cream-coloured paper. The print has a blue and yellow background on which a blueprint of a house, similar to print B has been printed in black lines. The top of the print has a black band running horizontally across the entire length. The band consists of numerous aligned nails or chisels. In the centre of the print a pair of antlers is depicted in yellow and blue. D: Printed on cream-coloured paper. The print is a blueprint of a library in the neoclassical architectural style. The lines of the architectural drawing are orange coloured and printed on a grey/blue and white marbled background. E: Printed on cream-coloured paper. This print combines different components from A, B and C. The print consists of a yellow and red/orange background onto which a blueprint of a house is printed in black lines. In the centre of the print a pair of antlers is depicted. Below the antlers several pairs of scissors, other tools and objects that look like pieces of paper are visible. Imposed on the blueprint are a black silhouette of a male figure and a probably female figure, portrayed with their backs facing each other. F: Printed on cream-coloured paper. This print depicts the blueprint of an architectural structure seen from a bird's eye view in rust coloured lines on a blue/grey and white marbled background. The structure is probably the library depicted in print D.
Event Date 14/8/2013
Author: rachel hand