Pressure Points Jessica McNicol

There’s nothing quite like a body of work from Carolyn V Watson. Like a time-lapse life cycle, Watson’s practice presents as a bizarre genus of lazarus organisms that stylistically pendulum back and forth between imagery of new life — fleshy and organic — to the dry solemnity of reliquary bones.

After a monumental run of back-to-back solo exhibitions throughout Queensland and Tasmania, followed by a well-earned hiatus, Watson has returned, regenerated, and renewed. The pendulum has swung, life has found a way (as the saying goes) and her current body of work — Pressure Points — is once again the image of softly blooming biology.

Appropriating a palette of purplish rot and bacterial bloom (respectfully), the work in Pressure Points sprouts from walls and plinths, incomprehensibly growing from the white walls of the gallery. It’s a grand return for Watson’s fantastic arcana, and in this collection her abundance of sculpture, expanded painting, and assemblage bubbles with shimmering, larval energy.

Previously, I have described Watson’s ‘fleshier’ work as sensual, suggestive — pink and white and delicate. If this was the case — the work in Pressure Points can only be described as ripe. Her familiar cocoons, scales and polymer buds have fruited, and works such as Phantom limb feels (Sceptre 1) and The wait of the crack (Sceptre 2) hark back to the delicate yet staff-like objects in the The shared comfort of uncertainty collection. These artefacts seemingly re-appear here, mulchy and colonised by purplish turkey tails and the reaching fingers of cordyceps.

She’s enlarged the scale of her trademark branching antlers, with four such works seemingly grafted from the imposing white mushroom of Where did you go and where are you now. She’s deepened surface textures, and her familiar beaded surfaces swell and glisten from fold and crevice in pearls and bloody pinks.

There’s typically a nuanced sense of autobiography to Watson’s practice, and anyone who knows her personally wouldn’t be surprised that this is exactly the way she would process a much needed break from the exhaustive demands of the past few years.

When I asked if this was her menopause show Watson laughed it off. It’s not — but it could be. Although the visual language is unmistakable in its authorship, Pressure Points thematically reflects the unstoppable biological imperative and organic decay. In As though the body could become a shrine (Sweet baby Shiv) Watson actually exposes the face of a doll — for once not shrouded or structural — her serene features are surprisingly stern in spite of the light rose in the cheeks. She sits atop the collection’s only authentic bone — a broken antler cum shiv protruding from her porcelain pelvis. It’s blatant and raw, and it comes across as Watson’s little joke.

Little One and The Long Keeping sees the artist return to another familiar motif — the double headed pig — here in its third iteration. Janus-like, this version’s clouded pearl eyes and embellished fleshy snouts turn heavenward, away from their girlish lace skirts, while delicate, seeking dolls hands reach towards their mirrored likeness — physically limited moments from a real connection.

For all its varicose hues and themes of decay, Pressure Points — despite the name, is light hearted. It seems like Watson’s had fun here, allowing metaphor to take the reins from her usual serious material symbolism. Made from scratch with construction materials more common to prop making and prototyping, Watson’s new works are almost entirely synthetic, and the change away from her usual process — driven by reverence and material scarcity — has given her license to be playful, up the scale, and take more risks.

Conversely — this switch to synthetic materials has allowed Watson the ability to create shared connection between many of the works in this collection — while some remain unseen (the shared parts of a fallow deer form) others appear to grow on the surface — mycelial networks that mirror their organic subject matter. Many of the works here are delicately edged in glow in the dark pigment, and while this phosphorescence most readily reads as the language of exotic fungi — borne of decay — Watson gleefully confirms that it was more girlish play — directly referenced from the plastic rooftop galaxies of a curious youth.

Perhaps the most experimental works in the whole collection, Watson’s series of expanded paintings and the exciting, amorphous growths of Body Rubble best embody Pressure Point’s conceptually recursive ecosystem. These works are created entirely from offcuts, in each case their petri dish palette and organic contours exist as a reanimation of waste material from the construction of the larger works. Body Rubble’s multitude of amorphous forms are all excised bulbs of expanding foam. Deceptively organic, it’s as if each sinewy globule dropped to the floor of the studio and began to take on a life of its own, eventually harvested from the rich undergrowth of Watson’s imagined ecosystem. While the series of painted panels appear coalesced from junk timber, their rough hewn compositions concealing conical growths that sprout from hidden crevices in their surfaces — yet they seem fresh, mottled, and fleshy despite their contemporary geometries.

It could be a neat coincidence that Watson’s experimental materiality has become an embodiment of recursive ecology, but it’s unlikely that someone who thinks so deeply, and responds to intuitively be in the dark about the complexity of her own practice. In any case, Pressure Points more than any of her previous collections has convinced me to imagine her studio as a self-sustaining biome fuelled by a simulacra of life, death and regeneration befitting her obsession with the mirrored worlds of the psychological and corporeal.

About the Curator

Laura Brinin

Laura Brinin is a curator of contemporary art, currently facilitating the vibrant program at Side Gallery in the heart of Red Hill, Brisbane. With an unwavering passion for nurturing connections with emerging and established creatives, Laura is dedicated to fostering artistic growth through avenues such as social media, branding, and identity development.

Laura has exhibited her own work both in Australia and overseas, as well as working as an independent freelance curator across Brisbane for over ten years. In her downtime, you can find her reading, travelling, or stalking dogs.

—   laura@sidegallery.com.au