Jenny Watson: Private views & rear visions

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (installation view) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Collection / © Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (installation view) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Collection / © Jenny Watson / View full image

This year, the QAGOMA Foundation Appeal invites support for the acquisition of leading Australian artist Jenny Watson’s extraordinary Private views and rear visions 2021–22. Until 7 July 2024, visitors to the Queensland Art Gallery can view this important work in Gallery 1.

Flashes of distant memories and glimpses of recent events are writ large in Private views and rear visions (illustrated). Comprising 48 paintings stacked along a wall, with each frame holding an individual scene, these pictures are taken from Watson’s personal recollections, ranging from treasured familial interactions to daydreams and unexceptional everyday occurrences. Horses and lone women are hallmarks of the artist’s practice, and within the multifarious scenes across Private views and rear visions they provide a sense of rhythm by reappearing in different guises. In one picture, a blonde woman, decked out in royal blue, is consumed by her phone (illustrated); in another, a female figure lays spread-eagled, with a vision of a whirlpool overhead conveying the sense of vertigo suffered after a horseriding accident (illustrated).

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson / View full image

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (detail) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (detail) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson / View full image

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (detail) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions (detail) 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson / View full image

Private views and rear visions is painted on printer’s proofs of the exhibition catalogue for Watson’s 2016 solo show ‘Chronicles’, held at Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Throughout her career, the artist has complicated the relationship between ideas of originality and standardisation, as well as between painting and conceptual art, and this blurring of dualities is continued by the two layers of images in Private views and rear visions.

Included in the Chronicles catalogue proofs are some of Watson’s early paintings of department-store advertising, such as A painted page: Myers Christmas catalogue 1979, where mass print is translated into unique paintings. Yet, in Private views and rear visions, these artworks are themselves transformed into mass-produced imagery. By using multiple copies of the catalogue as a backdrop, the repeatedly reproduced artworks become akin to the motifs or patterns found in the printed and embroidered textiles that the artist is renowned for using as a painting substrate.

In Chronicles, artworks from across Watson’s 50-year career appear in reproduction. The sense of a linear career trajectory that was created in the chronologically structured catalogue is scrambled by Private views and rear visions, as the pages appear out of order and often upside down. Time condenses and stretches, with paintings from different eras of Watson’s extensive oeuvre sitting side by side and the new artwork layered on top. This manipulation of time is further compounded by the newly painted content, which includes a mix of old memories and recent observations.

In Private views and rear visions, Watson conveys the way that emotion, memory and humour inform the way we experience the tempo of life.

Ellie Buttrose is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, Australia b.1951 / Private views and rear visions 2021–22 / Synthetic polymer paint on found digital prints on paper / 48 sheets: 102 x 72cm (sheet) / Courtesy: Jenny Watson / View full image

2024 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal

Your support will help to bring this remarkable work by an internationally recognised Brisbane-based artist into the Gallery’s Collection. For more information or to make a donation, visit qagoma.qld.gov.au/appeal, or contact the Foundation on (07) 3840 7262.

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Foundation is the Gallery’s vital fundraising body. The Foundation supports the development of the state art collection; the presentation of major national and international exhibitions; community-based public programs, including regional and children’s exhibitions; and the production of award-winning QAGOMA publications.

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