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| Sunday, 18 July 2004 |
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Aboriginal artist Jude Watson... Making sense of merged cultures By Kaminie Jayanthi Liyanage
She straddles two cultures. On her patrilineal side, the imperial inheritance handed down from her Scottish, English and Australian ancestry. On her matrilineal side, an aboriginal heritage claiming to have the longest cultural history dating back to the last Ice Age. Can she claim allegiance to one identity, and denounce the other, or, can she reconcile and merge the two cultures, overcoming the obvious tussles, both within her and out? For Judy Watson, an artist descending from the Waanyi language group of North West Queensland in Australia - more specifically, her grandmother's country around Lawn Hill Gorge or Mumbaleeya, Rainbow Serpent Country - her rosy skin has made the conciliation easier, at least for those regarding her from outside. Surfaces of white, or, lucidity, however belie the darker depths of pain which had been the legacy of her matrilineal generations in early history, due to marginalisation of natives and the failure of the then rulers to officially recognise the legitimacy of aboriginal people's right to possess land, in a land where they had lived for many years before Captain James Cook discovered what he called 'Australia' in 1770.
From her impassioned pouring of pigments on 'skins of earth' in her recently concluded art exhibition 'sacred ground beating heart', it was easy to see that the past hurts still rankle. But her sense of injustice would have held an added psycho-analysis, by the fact that she is, in actual life, cast the roles of both the imperialist with the potential of oppressing, as well as that of the marginalised. Can she emerge from either stereotype and make her mixed heritage more meaningful for the future? "It is hard to say which side of my heritage figures most in my art," Judy, considered one of Australia's most significant contemporary artists, ventured a guess on how she dealt with her cultural conflict. "I think my aboriginal genes came foremost, but I don't step away from things which defines my identity as an aborigine, or a woman, or an Australian in Queensland living in this particular time. Rather than an aboriginal artist, I see myself as a contemporary artist and it is what makes me who I am that makes my responses in a different way, with sensitivity to events, the past and the contemporary." That is art. But what of the cultural conflict in her, as an Australian citizen, a mother of two children who needed to grow balancing both legacies and not to be supercilious of either, and a granddaughter who made her first visit to her grandmother's country in 1990 after she had heard of her aboriginal ancestry and felt the vitality of reconnecting with her 'country' ties. Obviously, this reconnection to her ancestry and its accompanying hurtful history had harmonised well, enabling her, to borrow a phrase from her, "to deal with concealed histories, revealing them and removing whitewash." More visits with her toddler son 'Otus' and daughter 'Rani' were to emerge. For this slender woman, diaphanous and of somewhat bohemian attire, the re-discovery of the concepts of 'country' and 'owning land' would have been as paradoxical as her own deceptive fragile appearance, which apparently hide a great deal of inner solidity. She is glad that 'Waanyi' language is now one of the 'speaking languages' in Australia but rejects being tied down to one culture. "I merely collect experiences and release them in my art." Reconnecting her identity to the "running water people" of Australian "country", which she describes as being luscious with subterranean water, is, in a manner, a disavowal of an ethnographical identity, and, at the same time, a reclamation of one's identity as "people of the earth". It is a consolidation strengthened through her wide travels and residencies in Italy, Canada, Norway, India and France and many Australian towns such as Gippsland, Hobart and Darwin. Not surprisingly, she co-represented Australia in the 1997 Venice Biennale and won the Moet and Chandon Fellowship in 1995. Ask this artist who has been widely exhibited and included in major Australian and international collection over the past 20 years, whether she feels that aborigine art, with all the primitivity of rock art, bark art, desert art, dot painting, fossils, clubs, spears, boomerangs and totemic objects, is discriminated against in the mainstream Australian art, or even international art, for that matter. "Not necessarily artistes, but people!" answers Judy, "Yes, definitely!" She has escaped the slights her darker skinned colleagues may encounter, although aboriginal art has broken barriers to become a contemporary abstract art. "And despite all the changes that have taken place, many aborigines are still at the lowest rung of different cultural groups of Australia. In the Northern territory, aboriginal farmer groups are lobbying for land rights. In other states, some land has been given to aboriginal people," she says. Has she been able to impact any social changes through her art? "It all depends on the individual experience shown in one's art, which can make a powerful connection for an individual to go back to past experiences," explains Judy, rebutting any claim of having impacted changes through her own art. "I do not take away any cultural identities. I am all sorts of people, whether in Australia, or in other places." She has produced three major public artworks: Wurreka- a 50 metre etched zinc wall for the Melbourne Museum, Walama forecourt- a sculpted installation of steel screens and dilly bags at Sydney National Air Port, and Ngarm-gi Land/Law- another etched zinc wall at the Victorian County Court in Melbourne. Although aborigine art figures prominently in outback tourism in a continent containing a massive portion of outback, Judy regrets that faked art parading as aborigine art has undone this good to some degree. "We do not have to speak," says Judy of this vital connection to her "country consciousness", paving way for better understanding of "others" in her country. "We know how we feel by walking in aboriginal country and seeing its art. It is tangible evidence of our different selves. It creates a strong feeling of coming together!" |
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