Ruth Watson: The Developing World

Ruth Watson, whose work has been described as taking the viewer on 'an intellectual adventure,' presents The Developing World, the latest in a series of her map-related works.

Watson, one of New Zealand's leading contemporary artists, was born in Christchurch but is now based in Sydney. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury and, in 1992, was the recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Award. Mapping, both literal and figurative, has always been an important element in Watson's work, and her installation for the Annex continues to explore themes touched on in previous exhibitions such as Souvenirs du Monde, Planetarium and Vantage. In her Wonderlands piece, exhibited to a very favourable public response at the Jonathan Smart Gallery last year, she presented a wall studded with photographic fragments cut in the shape of various countries, their silhouettes made out of images gathered from a diverse range of sources.

For The Developing World, Watson has taken the images of these countries and, with the aid of computer technology, has morphed the countries into one another. The resultant images will then be projected from the four corners of the Annex ceiling (an allusion to the four directional points of a compass) onto the floor of the darkened gallery, creating a constantly moving and changing montage of colour and form.

Watson uses maps to highlight the instability and ambiguity of cartography: '(Maps) are typical of the things we take for granted: things which are often more complex than they seem.' Her work recognises the human need to divide the world into smaller, chartable territories in order to create something we feel we can recognise and understand, but it also acknowledges that such divisions are idealised, rather than actual, and reflect the beliefs and projections of the hand that charted them. Watson's previous use of old maps made reference to their political use as documents for colonisation, a process underwritten by the assumption that once something has been mapped, it is also somehow 'owned.'

Humanity's firmly held faith in the fidelity of photography also comes under examination in Watson's work, and she links that medium's ability to present and enforce a particular vantage point with the God-like hand of the mapmaker: 'Drawing a map is a way of controlling the world image or controlling your part in it.' Her photographs are recognisable as countries, but by morphing them into one another she questions our unconscious associations and assumptions. When presented with a map of Africa for example, we make certain mental connections, but we can never hope to express all that the continent is. Similarly, the atlas version of the Pacific Ocean as a vast expanse of blue dotted with tiny islands, whilst recognised as 'geographical fact,' imparts nothing of the multitudinous traditions, languages and histories that dominate that region and contribute to its unique essence. Watson examines the importance of location to identity, and the part that maps have played and continue to play in the demarcation and manipulation of cultural territory: 'The main thing about my work is understanding. Understanding yourself and where you are in the world.'

This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Contemporary Art Annex in the Arts Centre.