Looking Glass: Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce
Just inside the first large gallery space at the TarraWarra Museum of Art is a wall-size photograph of a cemetery in a palette of muted greys. The graves are homogenous, modest, tilting with age. Scattered among the headstones are sun-bleached plastic flowers and concrete teddy bears clasping empty concrete vases. In front of the photograph stands a mortuary table bearing blackened glass objects.
The site is Woomera Cemetery. The glass bush plums are ‘darkened and deformed to represent … children born without body parts’, according to a wall plaque for Only a Mother Could Love Them (2016). Each embryonic, spherical form is punctured with a lipped, lopsided hole, like a bubble burst in lava; stems resemble severed umbilical cords. Around the corner, Fallout Babies (2016) – bush plums in opaque white glass – stand on hospital cribs.
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.