Gallery reopening on 13 November with Judy Watson

Tolarno Galleries will reopen to the public from 10am Friday 13 November with a limited number of visitors allowed into the exhibition in accordance with Victorian Government guidelines.
Regular opening hours resume, Tuesday to Friday 10am – 5 pm, Saturday 1pm – 4pm.

The gallery reopens with a new exhibition:

JUDY WATSON
memory scars, dreams and gardens
13 November to 12 December 2020
Click to download the roomsheet or the catalogue essay by Katina Davidson.

A new urgency is present in Judy Watson’s memory scars, dreams and gardens… With matrilineal Waanyi ancestry, Watson’s artistic practice is centred in truth telling and ever informed by the archives that she mines. As observed by senior curator Hetti Perkins in a recent conversation with Judy Watson, her practice is “deeply personal, observational” and holds “simultaneously expression of the global ‘big picture’ and personal ‘small picture’”.
In the case of this body of work, the sentiment rings true. Rather than facing back into history – including researching evidence of massacres, and identifying historic cultural objects held in the bowels of overseas institutions – this body of work is rooted in her observations of the present. In Watson’s words, the works embody:

what I have seen
what I have done
where I have been
what I have made

Image: Judy Watson memory scar, cotton tree leaf, grass, brachychiton illawarra flame tree pods 2020, indigo, acrylic, graphite, pigment and acrylic binder medium on canvas, 180 x 148.5 cm