New Contemporaries, Sydney College of the Arts, 2024
Discarded ironing boards, community gifted non-native plants, repurposed hessian bags, thread, lumen print on Ilford Multigrade FB Classic gloss, WAV audio file (5:40), bluetooth headphones, 320 numbered endemic native seedlings. 3 x 5 x 5m.
Manipulated, Articulate Project Space, Nov 2024
Inkjet print on Ilford Gold Fibre Gloss and digital prints on polyester Georgette.
200 x 160 x 80cm
B.R.E.A.T.H.E is a lumen print record of three days of the artist’s outdoor meditation practice. This praxis is not conceived as a panacea but a salve, an act of resistance and resilience. B.R.E.A.T.H.E is a tribute to those lost, imbued with longing and hope for change, as we witness Brutality. Rape. Extraction. Apathy. Terror. Horror. Extinction on our hand-sized computers daily.
Airspace Projects, 5-21 July 2024
COMPOST IS SO HOT explores compost (ing) as an embodied artistic practice and methodology. A new body of work spanning photo media, textiles, sculpture, and sound art, inspired by the concept of sympoiesis or “making with” coined by multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway.
My practice was situated at my children’s school in Sydney’s Inner West for much of the last 12 months, the 8 compost bins are the heart of the edible garden and my practice. To understand the temperature fluctuations, I monitored the compost bins between June 23-June 24, generating hundreds of images, recording changes of materiality, temporality, and climate.
“The physicality of composting: my collecting, layering, moving, and turning are actions of intent. The intent to replace, rejuvenate, and invigorate. In our world of extractive capitalism and endless consumption, I position composting as an act of repair.
“COMPOST IS SO HOT (the title) is inspired by a bumper sticker by ecosexuals, performance artists and activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s maintenance art manifesto has also supported my ideas of what art is and can be. So much so that I made myself a “Compost Artist” badge, that I wear while I’m at work in the garden,” says Watters.
My compost (ing) is an embodied artistic practice and methodology inspired by the concept of sympoiesis, or “making with” coined by Donna Haraway. Transforming Matter was a series of paired lumen prints of compost material, one was exhibited unfixed so decomposed throughout the exhibition and was fixed following its public decay.
My passion for compost stems from its power to transform, to evoke wonder and awe, and the potential it holds to generate energy, capture carbon, and create fertiliser.
Transforming Matter I, exhibited in Process (ed), Articulate Project Space, 2024
Transforming Matter II, exhibited in Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, Muswellbrook Regional Gallery, 2024
Transforming Matter III & V, exhibited in Compost is so Hot, Airspace Projects, Marrickville, 2024
Transforming Matter IV, exhibited in Never Far from the Tree, Seaview St Gallery, 2024
Transforming Matter VI, exhibited in USU Creative Awards, Verge Gallery, 2024
Herland, Women’s Library Newtown, 2018.
Acrylic on paper, 50cm x 70cm unframed, 63cm x 83cm framed.
Towards the end of my third pregnancy I began a series of print works on paper using acrylic paint applied to my body. I applied the paint, thickly with a sponge and carefully lowered my nude body to the paper where my breasts and enlarged uterus created an enduring mark that would live beyond the fleeting months of pregnancy.
The performative nature of this weekly ritual explored the change and physical growth of my body over time. Time is full of contradictions: our experience of it, the relativity of it, as well as the subjective nature of linear time.
This medium and process was inspired by Yves Klein’s “Anthropometry” series. Except that in these self-portraits, I was the creator as well as the living paintbrush.
2023, audio file 3:28
This idea development has come from questioning the idea of “productivity” in a late-capitalist society, and how my art practice might seek to disengage with or critique cycles of consumption and productivity for profit in art and society.
AI is about speeding up access to ideas, things, and breaking down ownership, in order to boost human productivity and knowledge. I am also reading researching the capacity it has to destroy existing knowledge systems and authorship (Bridle 2023), render humans obsolete (Hogarth, in Syme 2023), and exploit workers (Perrigo 2023).
Furthermore, I’m intersecting with a psychological or artistic idea of potential. The essay of Pakistani psychoanalyst Masud Khan “On Lying Fallow” speaks to inviting an emotional and physical state of mind that “allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness.” (Popova 2023).
30 Nov - 10 Dec, 2023 107 Redfern
Safe Space explored the impact of gender-based violence in our community during 16 Days of Activism, a worldwide campaign to eliminate gender-based violence.
Safe Space supported the Redfern-based feminist, grassroots organisation the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre (WAGEC) by donating 50% of profits from sales of photographic prints and wearable sculpture.
An artist talk and free two-hour gender-based violence bystander and ally community workshop took place on Sunday 10 December (Human Rights Day). Delivered by WAGEC, the workshop supported community understand the root causes and safely intervene.
Supported by City of Sydney and 107 Projects
Installation view at 107, Redfern. Credit: Sarah Malone
22 June - 2 July 2023, Scratch Art Space, Marrickville
Surveillance featured voyeuristic photography of suburban Marrickville at night displayed under cut and coloured acrylic, alongside sculpture, and paintings. This kaleidoscope of colour invites reflection on how light bridges public/private spaces and the nature of surveillance.
“I began work on this project during the long, dark lockdown of 2021. The inequity across the city was stark, and I reflected deeply on the privilege of working at home and being able to isolate. When I walked at night, my attention was captured by the way light radiated from windows and doors. It was as though light created a portal for me to create an imagined connection to the lives within. As work continued in the studio, the connections have expanded – I’ve been thinking about surveillance more broadly. How are we watched? Who watches?” said Watters.
The rain series explores the intersection of abstraction, photography and the temporal. The experimental methodology involves the application of acrylic paint with immediate exposure to rain, the pigment forming ethereal shapes and washes across the canvas with remarkable variation. Some recent works are “sound paintings” as a microphone beneath the canvas records the aural creation of the work.
It’s impossible to engage with the rain series without imagining the heightened emotional state that accompanies the physical experience of being wet, and conversely, the feeling of comfort when sheltered from the rain. Being immersed in rain is a grounding, connective experience that highlights our relationship to, and impact on, the environment.
Performative, meditative and unpredictable - the rain series captures moments of nature, giving permanent expression in colour and sound, to an impermanent, immutable process.
