Jenny Watson Visits Ararat

Jenny Watson, one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, will visit Ararat Regional Art Gallery on Wednesday 12 September 2012 at 7pm to talk about her international career and 30 year-plus arts practice, which includes painting and mixed media on fabric, often incorporating text and script.  Her illustrated talk will provide an insight into her development as an artist and coincides with the gallery’s ‘Recent Acquisitions’ exhibition which includes her suite of eight lithographic prints on show until 22 October 2012.  

Jenny Watson came to prominence as an artist in the late 1970s during a formative period in the rise of Melbourne’s underground creative community.  During this time Jenny’s practice included commissions for post-punk musicians including Boys Next Door and The Go-Betweens.  In the early 1980s Jenny’s art was positioned as part of the ‘return to figuration’ in international contemporary painting known as neo-expressionism.  She exhibited widely and was represented in Paul Taylor’s groundbreaking 1982 exhibition, ‘Popism’, at the National Gallery of Victoria, which signaled a new internationally-focussed critical context for Australian art.  She represented Australia at the 1993 Venice Biennale and her work is represented in all major Australian public and private collections. She continues to regularly exhibit internationally and is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery (Melbourne), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Sydney), Greenaway Gallery (Adelaide), Transit (Belgium), Annina Nosei Gallery (New York) and Gimpel Fils (London).   She will present her first one person show in Tokyo in October 2012 with Tomio Koyama Gallery.

Jenny’s diaristic art is often knowingly child-like and expressionistic, and her use of colour and energetic mark-making heightens our empathy with her subjects.  She makes the ordinary extraordinary in her ambiguous narratives, which are often tinged with pathos.  Her work increases our identification with seductively familiar situations, which are personal and specific, yet evocative of our collective memory.  She often paints directly on fabric sourced from a range of cultural contexts which adds further layers of meaning to her work.

Jenny Watson’s talk is free.  Please RSVP to (03) 5352 2836 or gallery@ararat.vic.gov.au by 10 September 2012 to confirm your attendance.