Gangulu and Birri Gubba artist, Lilla Watson works in a medium that not only is innovative but highly personal to her as an Aboriginal woman. Watson creates images using a burning technique where holes are burnt into the paper leaving scorch and smoke marks that further help in the creation of the completed image.
Watson’s first solo show was held in Brisbane in 1993 and since then she has had a number of other solo shows at Alcastan House in Melbourne in 1994; four solo shows at Marlene Antico Fine Arts Gallery in Paddington in 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2006 and one show in 2003 at Michel Sourgnes Fine Arts Gallery, Brisbane. Watson participated in the group show 'Dreamings’ which was exhibited in Arnhem in the Netherlands in 1997. She has had her work shown in a Queensland Arts Council organised touring exhibition, 'My Mother’s Country: Freshwater Country’ and the 2001 exhibition 'Gatherings, Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art from Queensland, Australia’. Her artist statement from the 'Gatherings’ catalogue reads, “I work solely from Aboriginal terms of reference. In that, I hopefully project the Murri understanding that people are much more spirit than matter. The pictures I create are like age-old pictures being pushed up from the earth, so I can be really pleased that I have a technique or process whereby I am using very basic natural elements of burnings, scorchings, and smokemarks. I don’t use any paint.”
In 2002 her work, Keepers of the Fire was translated into public art it was etched into the pavement in the Roma Street Parklands in Brisbane.
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- Writers:
- Allas, Tess
- Date written:
- 2007
- Last updated:
- 2011
