In this large-scale painting moreton bay rivers, australian temperature chart, freshwater mussels, net, spectrogram 2022 (illustrated) on display within ‘mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri‘ (tomorrow the tree grows stronger) at the Queensland Art Gallery until 11 August 2024, Judy Watson surveys the rising tide of climate change by representing a bird’s-eye view of Queensland’s Moreton Bay and its rivers, overlaid with a chart of Australia’s average air and water temperatures recorded between 1910 and 2019.

Queensland Art Gallery Watermall

Watson integrated this data with the knowledges of women close to her. With her nephew’s partner, Tor Maclean, she experimented with botanical-dyeing and stencilling. Aunty Helena Gulash spoke the Kabi Kabi word ‘gila’, meaning ‘light coloured native bee’ — represented here in the form of a spectrograms (visual representations of recorded sound). At her mother Joyce Watson’s home, the artist painted the spectrograms, while at her cousin Dorothy Watson’s home in Oxley — close to the flood-prone Oxley Creek — she dyed the work in indigo.

Three freshwater mussel shells, known as malu malu in Watson’s Waanyi language, are also represented in this work.

Judy Watson ‘moreton bay rivers, australian temperature chart, freshwater mussels, net, spectrogram’ 2022

Acknowledgment of Country
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past and present and, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the immense creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country. It is customary in many Indigenous communities not to mention the name or reproduce photographs of the deceased. All such mentions and photographs are with permission, however, care and discretion should be exercised.

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