ANNE-MARIE WATSON
This is My Revolution
29/10/16 - 26/11/16
PRESS RELEASE
‘This is my revolution’ is the first solo exhibition of Anne-Marie Watson’s intricately detailed pen and ink drawings.
At the beginning of 2014 Watson created a series of 13 drawings, ‘The story so far, by Anne-Marie Watson. This is my revolution’. Taking the form of a written text told in the first person they detail memories and reflections on her life to date. The writing is a free and associative process which allows for daydreaming and tangential ideas, somewhere between fact and fiction.
‘During 2013, in my 34th year, I made a series of decisions which would change the course of my life. As a beginning to this new stage I wanted to find a way to tell my story so far and decided to be the narrator rather than the unwitting protagonist in it.’
‘The story so far...’ emerged through Watson’s daily ritual, sitting and writing while turning the pages round and round, pouring her memories onto each sheet. Akin to one off daily performances the resulting works contain an imprint of this charged, intimate and repetitive act and are a record of this time as well as the past they contain.
Due to the fallibility of memory the work only describes one possible version of Watson’s life, what she remembered at the time of writing. It was written organically with the only prescription that she try and attach no criticism or judgment to her memories.
The 13 drawings represent the number of moon cycles which can occur over a year. Watson chose colours to reflect the names traditionally given to each moon cycle: Blue Moon, Pink Moon, Harvest Moon.
The fourteenth piece, ‘The Future...’ a postscript to the original story contains a child’s hopes and dreams for the future alongside the adults wishes for her life to come.
‘I am interested in the repetitive, cyclical and ongoing nature of our experience the revolutions that occur throughout all our lives.’