Sian Watson: Migration. M16 Artspace. Until February 2, 2020
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Sian Watson gained a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours (First Class) from ANU in 2015. She was a recipient of many awards as part of the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS), winning the Margaret Munro Mentorship and a public commission with Crafted Development Inc.
Since graduating, Watson has often exhibited sculptures in Australia, Canada and the US. However, this is the first time she has exhibited photographs.
Watson is highly influenced by the natural environment. She grew up on a farm near Hall, becoming familiar with life and death in the environment. She experienced at first hand the effects elements have on a landscape. What she learned about the processes has developed into a recurring theme within her work. She utilises the deeply felt reactions that people have with these processes and plays on the ideas of time and movement; referencing animals that inhabit our landscapes.
Much of Watson's work explores the relationship of humans with the land through the means of material, scale or shape. In a modest way, this photography exhibition responds to the challenge of representing landscape when it is seen as something we know and understand.
There are only a small number of images, printed on aluminium. The exhibition is most timely given what we all have experienced this summer, either directly or through the extensive media coverage of drought, bushfires and storms. Even a brief glance at social media reveals that many of us have found ourselves asking questions about how we experience place in the landscape once elements of it are damaged, destroyed or completely removed.
This exhibition began with photos that started when Watson was travelling in Utah last year. The images Investigate the movement and environmental displacement of humans and birds. They explore our shared vulnerability with nature, with which we have all been confronted in recent weeks. Particularly interested in the fusion of human and animal life, she observes that humans and birds both move a lot. Both migrate and fly through areas not taking boundaries into consideration - humans of course generally use planes to fly.
Human migration is commonly about movement and travelling undertaken because of harsh situations. For refugees the journeys can be dangerous. Likewise, migrating birds travel on perilous journeys.
The photographs portray Watson herself, wearing a cone-shaped mask. We are invited to contemplate the possibility that she could fly like the birds. She is portrayed as half human, half bird. She has her human torso but also has a bird's beak. She has fused bird and human being.
In one image we see the half-human, half-bird lying on snow in a swimsuit - an impromptu and performance-based capture. In another, this same fused creature is perched looking upwards to the skies much as a bird often does. In yet another there is an animal-like shadow.
These images are about environmental and social change and adaptation, and the moral roles that humans and animals might play in times to come. Through the fusion of human and bird Watson has created works that question our relationships with, and understanding of, animals and invites us to create our own imaginative conclusions.
Watson will be gallery sitting on both days of the final weekend of the exhibition.