Jenny Watson: Chronicles
Jenny Watson: Chronicles
2016, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 42 x 30 cm
Published by Griffith University, Brisbane
Published to accompany the exhibition Jenny Watson: Chronicles, 14 July – 3 September 2016, Griffith University Art Museum, the exhibition and catalogue take a thematic approach to Watson’s work, focusing on the prevalence of text throughout her career, and the powerful role it has played in constructing her highly personal narratives. The works included in the exhibition track Watson’s career trajectory from the earliest appearance of text in the 1970s, through the deliberate deskilling of her painterly style, to a new suite of works where text, painting and objects interact. Seminal works include the suburban house ‘double paintings’, the newspaper and magazine pages, and the An Original Oil Painting duo of works, which took Watson’s conceptual project to its most reductive point. The inclusion of text and the painted image has formed a crucial duality in Watson’s practice and its various manifestations provides the thread connecting the works in the exhibition. While the images in Watson’s more recent paintings have simplified, the relationship between the elements has become more complex.