Ruth Watson (artist)

Ruth Watson (artist)
Ruth Elizabeth Watson (born 1962), is a New Zealand artist currently living in Auckland, New Zealand.
Education
Watson received a BFA in painting from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, in 1984, a MVA from Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney in 1999 and a PhD from the Australian National University in 2005. She also has a Postgraduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies from the University of Canterbury in 2015.
Awards and honours
2018 Wellington Sculpture Trust, 4P6
2014 Fulbright-Wallace Art Award
2005 Walter W. Ristow Award for an emerging scholar in the history of cartography
1994 Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship
1992 Oliver Spencer Bower Award
Residencies
2015 Headlands Centre for the Arts, Sausolito, California
2009 Short term research fellowship, Newberry Library, Chicago
2005 Asialink Australia Visual Arts Residency, New Delhi
1992 Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
Exhibitions
Watson has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in both New Zealand and Australia, with some exhibitions in Germany and the United States. She has worked in sculpture, photography, installation art and painting and began working with cartographic imagery while an undergraduate in the early 1980s. Issues concerning the representation of the world have been a main focus of her work since that time. Her work has been included in several exhibitions and publications relating to art and cartography. Group exhibitions include the 9th Sydney Biennale The Boundary Rider (1992), Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art (1992), Cultural Safety, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Ludwig Forum Aachen (1995 / 1996), The World Over, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1996), Living Here Now: Art and Politics (1999), Paradise Now, Asia Society Museum, New York (2004), Better Places at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2008), Unnerved: The New Zealand Project Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2010), SCAPE Biennale of Public Art (2011), grenzūberschreitend/across boundaries, Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen Germany (2018).
The same year, she collaborated with the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and created the largest map of the universe at that time. She joined the staff of Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2006. In the summer of 2010-2011, Watson travelled to Antarctica as part of a science-based course run by Gateway Antarctica at the University of Canterbury. She subsequently produced artworks based on her experiences. She occasionally publishes writings on other artists' work.
Further reading
Nicole Roth, "grenzūberschreitend/across boundaries", Draiflessen Collection, Germany, 2018
Boswell, Rebecca, “Geophagy by Ruth Watson”, Art + Australia online
Harmon, Katharine, "The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography", New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009
Pound, Francis, "The Invention of New Zealand: Art & National Identity 1930-1970", AUP, 2009
Cosgrove, Denis, "Maps, mapping, modernity: Art and cartography in the twentieth century." Imago Mundi 57,1 2005.
Chiu, Melissa, "Tikis, Torches and Beachside Barbeques” in Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific", 2004
Curnow, Wystan, "Mapping and the expanded field of contemporary art”, in Cosgrove, Denis (ed) “Mappings”, London: Reaktion Books, 1999
References
External links
Official Website
Living people
1962 births
Ilam School of Fine Arts alumni
Australian National University alumni