Ruth Watson
Swamp
Biography:
Ruth Watson, New Zealand
Since the mid-eighties Canterbury-born artist Ruth Watson has exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally, producing a substantial body of artwork stemming from her interest in the histories and processes of cartography. A number of the artist’s works have only a temporary presence – she has made maps by pouring wine onto carpets, smearing plasticine onto walls, or icing a cake – the fragility and impermanence of their materials often evokes a sense of the elusiveness, even impossibility of arriving at any singular, authoritative world view.
Watson recently exhibited Au hasard, Unnerved, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 2010; Entangled, Te Tuhi, Centre for the Arts, Manakau, 2008; The (re)formed world, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 2008. Other important exhibitions include Unsafe, Two Rooms, Auckland, 2007; Telecom Prospect, Wellington, 2004; Paradise Now?: Contemporary Art from the Pacific, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2004; The World Over, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1996; and The Boundary Rider, 9th Sydney Biennale, 1992.
Site is a crucial element to many of the artist’s works; environment and experience play an intrinsic role in the planning of her works of art. Watson attempts to transform the manner in which society identifies and defines experiential spaces. Watson’s 12-metre map of the universe, titled Between Light and Dark Matters, was installed in one of the ruined observatories outside Canberra in an area devastated by the 2003 bush fires. Between Light and Dark Matters carries a particular poignancy because, although installed the Yale-Columbia Observatory, a place established to ‘view the heavens’, the physical reality of the site was, at the time, completely incapacitated.
For the 6th SCAPE Ruth Watson was to present Swamp, an artwork for visitors to and residents of Christchurch to engage with the inner city streetscape at night.
Swamp was to consist of two large-scale outdoor video projections to be viewed at night along High Street. The imagery is both site-specific and open-ended in reference.
Re-worked for its re-presentation on Silo 6 along the Auckland Waterfront, the imagery presented as two separate moving images, showing sequences of water that flowed, reversed and flowed again.
Location - Silo Park, Wynard Quarter, Waterfront Auckland
Dates - 3-7 August 2011, 6pm - midnight
Video - http://www.scapebiennial.org.nz/2011-video
Further Information: www.tworooms.co.nz
Ruth Watson, "Swamp", Silo Park Wynard Quarter Waterfront Auckland, 3-7 August 2011. Photo credit: Maria Walls
