Education Resource: ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson’
Judy Watson, Waanyi people, Australia b.1959 / moreton bay rivers, australian temperature chart, freshwater mussels, net, spectrogram 2022 / Indigo dye, graphite, synthetic polymer paint, waxed linen thread and pastel on cotton / 247 x 488cm / Purchased 2023 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / View full image
For more than four decades, Waanyi artist Judy Watson has created powerful, ethereal works of art. ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson’ is a comprehensive survey of the renowned Queensland artist’s incisive meditations on colonial, social and ecological concerns.
The exhibition comprises more than 120 works, including paintings, prints, sculptures, installations and moving-image works. Truth-telling has been central to Watson’s artistic practice, particularly concerning environmental protection; historic government policy in relation to Indigenous Australians; and the collecting institutions that house cultural material and ancestral remains. Other works focus on the role of women and feminist critique.
The exhibition’s title ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri’, meaning ‘tomorrow the tree grows stronger’, is taken from a poem in Waanyi language by the artist’s son, Otis Carmichael.