
Jenny Watson: Chronicles
Griffith University, Brisbane 2016
Born in Melbourne, Australia 1951
Lives and works in Brisbane
Jenny Watson is known for candid works that document her life and dreams. Her paintings reflect a particular emphasis on women’s experience by depicting female figures on fabrics selected for their cultural significance, geographic origins and individual histories.
Over the past thirty years Watson has explored the interior life with a personal iconography. Through her paintings we are offered a lexicon of horses, pets, friends, found phrases and everyday ephemera, together building subjective representations of the artist. Each work can be read as a conjunction of its textual and visual motifs, together with its title, but also in reference to her preceding body of work. The interrelation of these different elements in Watson’s work is not arbitrary. Rather, they are connected, as different elements in our lives are, at times strongly inter-related yet at other times fleeting or fragmentary.
Exhibitions include: Jenny Watson: The Fabric of Fantasy, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2017); ‘Painting, More Painting – Chapter 2’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2016); ‘Shut Up and Paint’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2016); ‘Chronicles’, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane (2016); ‘Beyond the Tower: UQ Art Museum – 40 Years and Counting’, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2016); ‘Radical Romanticism’, Crane Arts, Philadelphia (2015); ‘Pop to Popism’, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2014); ‘Garden of Eden & Child’s Play’, Galerie Transit, Belgium (2014); ‘Solitaire’, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria (2014); ‘Basil Sellers Art Prize 4’, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne (2014); ‘Mix Tape 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); ‘Jenny Watson: here, there and everywhere’, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne (2012); ‘Tomio Koyama Gallery’, Shibuya, Japan (2012); ‘Material Evidence’, Kunstverein Rosenheim, Germany (2009); and ‘Paintings with Veils and False Tails’, Australian Pavillion, Venice Biennale (1993).
Public collections include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Ghent Museum, Belgium; and Monash University, Melbourne.
Jenny Watson
Embodied Knowledge
13th August 2022 – 22nd January 2023
QAGOMA
Jenny Watson
Horses, Hollywood Love and Sleep
21st May – 11th June 2022
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, Stieg Persson, John Nixon
Light & Darkness:Late modernism and the Power Collection
10th January – 27th November 2022
Chau Chak Wing Museum
Jenny Watson
Definitions: Velvet + Text
24th March – 21st April 2018
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
Fabrications
23rd April – 30th May 2015
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
Layerings
22nd March – 5th May 2012
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Tom Nicholson, Jenny Watson, Mutlu Çerkez, Peter Tyndall, Ian Whittlesea, Mike Parr, Emily Floyd, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, Rose Nolan, Grant Stevens
WORD
4th July – 8th August 2009
Anna Schwartz Gallery Carriageworks
Jenny Watson
5th February – 7th March 2009
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
Works made in Sri Lanka
4th – 27th May 2006
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
Made In Perth
5th – 29th March 2003
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
7th – 15th February 2001
Anna Schwartz Gallery
Jenny Watson
The First Riding Lesson, 2021
acrylic and gesso on rabbit skin glue primed Belgian linen
183 x 274 cm
Jenny Watson
A Horse in Chocolate, 2020
oil, acrylic, pigment and collage on rabbit skin glue-primed on Belgian linen
210 x 182 cm
Jenny Watson
Feed, 2019
acrylic on Italian damask
140 x 107 cm
Jenny Watson
A School Girl from the Back, 2019
acrylic on vintage French Chintz and French Disney jigsaw puzzle
painting: 151 x 94 cm
jigsaw box: 3.5 x 15.2 x 10 cm
Jenny Watson
White Mischief, 2019
acrylic on Italian damask and cutting collaged to Japanese plywood support
painting: 153 x 105.5 cm
object: 14 x 14 x 2 cm
Jenny Watson
Skater, 2017
oil and acrylic on red velvet; acrylic on panel
text: ‘She was in the city and ran into an old friend. In chatting they discovered that they would soon be in the same European city on the same day. They arranged to meet’
two parts: image: 144 x 87 cm; text: 29.6 x 42 cm
Jenny Watson
White Cat, 2017
oil and acrylic on red velvet; acrylic on panel
text: ‘A friend didn’t like making desserts But she said that every night when they were watching TV, they had a piece of dark chocolate. It sounded so cosy!’
two parts: image: 144 x 87 cm; text: 27.3 x 22 cm
Jenny Watson
Girl in a Blindfold, 2016
oil and acrylic on French furnishing velvet; acrylic on prepared oval text panel; vintage china dog on shelf
three parts: image: 124 x 150 cm; text: 52 x 40 cm; figurine: 5 x 4 x 4 cm
Jenny Watson
Trotting Horse, 2014
oil and acrylic on traditional rustic French stretch linen primed with rabbit skin glue
69 x 139 cm
Jenny Watson
Moon, Sophie + Me, 2013
acrylic, oil, oilstick, pigment, pom poms on Japanese gesso-primed Belgian linen
293 x 124 cm
Jenny Watson
White Horse with Telescope, 2012
synthetic polymer paint on rabbit skin glue primed cotton
200 x 130 cm
Jenny Watson
Me in Short Dress, 2012
synthetic polymer paint on rabbit skin glue primed cotton
220 x 80 cm
Jenny Watson
Bruce Kicking Football, 2012
synthetic polymer paint on rabbit skin glue primed cotton
180 x 80 cm
Jenny Watson
Mum in Dressing-Gown, 2012
synthetic polymer paint on rabbit skin glue primed cotton
128 x 80 cm
Jenny Watson
Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield 8” on Buttercup Yellow, 2011
Liquitex acrylic on silk, organza overlay, shantung bow
141 x 81 cm
Jenny Watson
Wild, White Horse, 1993
oil and acrylic on Chinese velvet with white horse tail;
acrylic on prepared text panel
image: 152 x 107 cm; text: 20 x 15 cm
Jenny Watson
A Painted Page 5: The Sun Jezza Will Stay, Blues, 1979 – 80
oil on cotton duck
58 x 67.6 cm
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