Jen­ny Watson

Paint­ings on plain and print­ed fab­rics sourced on her trav­els con­tin­ue Jen­ny Watson’s fas­ci­na­tion with the elo­quence of found ​“non-art”materials and her lan­guage of per­son­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal imagery. This exhi­bi­tion, paint­ed in India, com­bines images and text to offer a poet­ry of found phras­es, mem­o­ries and reflec­tions: Jenny’s close­ly observed expe­ri­ences which find a res­o­nant commonality…

Work­ing ​“out of a suit­case” has been a way to com­bine trav­el and make work for quite some time now. Although it sounds wild and care­free, it requires extreme preparation.

These fab­rics were sourced ear­ly in 2008 from a friend in Thai­land and some I found in Hong Kong. The ​“water­col­or” paper is actu­al­ly Chi­nese wrap­ping paper.

The fab­rics are thin­ly glued to make them rol­lable and fold­able. The extra ​“piece” that I use, whether it be a text pan­el, a toy, a vin­tage ceram­ic or a veil of organ­za, has to be sourced on the trip. It must be a dis­cov­ery that is part of the adventure.

In this case, walk­ing through a bazaar in the ear­ly evening in Bom­bay, many of the sari shops were too ortho­dox and con­ser­v­a­tive, with (under­stand­ably!) very lit­tle ​“see through” fab­ric. A guide called Bob­by led me to a tiny shop, 4′ wide, stacked to the rafters with every kind of fab­ric length you could imag­ine. I ten­ta­tive­ly inves­ti­gat­ed one, a pas­tel silk pash­mi­na, close to the pro­por­tions I like to work with. ​“That’s it!”. A light­bulb went off in my head, and I greed­i­ly chose the 8 I would use, hav­ing a blue­print of the colour require­ments in my mind.

The drap­ing of the pieces, the tuck­ing, the sewing, the just plain hang­ing over the diverse but con­nect­ed range of images has made a hap­py res­o­lu­tion to this series of paintings.

– J.W. 2009