Reflections on the self, particularly during the transition from childhood into adulthood, are a recurring theme in Watson’s work. In the late 1970s she made photorealist depictions of the homes she had lived in and the suburban middle-class milieu in which she grew up. In the early 1980s her work turned from the appearance of the outside world of her childhood to the experience of her inner world – of memory, dreams, desires and emotions.
Adopting a punk aesthetic of using any materials to hand – such as hessian, velvet and taffeta – Watson and other artists from Melbourne’s 1980s Art Projects debunked ideas about what art ‘should’ be. She pursued this anti-traditionalism into a deliberately naive style of expression directly accessed from memory and experience rather than the intellect. Such conscious ‘unskilling’ promoted spontaniety and freedom of expression, enabling a randomness to take over her work and for a childlike sensibility to prevail. Alongside this rejection of the conventions of formalism, Watson turned to autobiographical and diaristic subject matter, using images and impressions from her childhood and adolescence as material. Like other feminist artists of the 1980s she investigated the social construction of femininity, which she explored from a personal perspective. The horses, bedrooms, dream diaries and flame-haired girls in blue nightdresses that populate Watson’s paintings hark back to the obsessions and preoccupations of her girlhood, reflecting on the innocent construction of self prior to the imposition of social and cultural expectations.
Dr Nicola Teffer, MCA Collection Online
Artist
Jenny Watson
Opening Event | Thursday 8 October 5-7PM