Anne-Marie Watson

This afternoon I had the pleasure of introducing Anne-Marie Watson to the First year Painting and Printmaking students at Glasgow School of Art. She delivered an excellent lecture about 'Drawing', referencing a wide range of historical and contemporary artists and covering drawing in it's many forms.

Anne-Marie Watson is an independent Curator, Writer and Artist. Like me, she went to Leeds College of Art and Design to do an Art Foundation course, before moving to Glasgow to study Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art.  

After graduating Watson co-ran an organisation in Glasgow called SEAM (2003 - 2005) where they organised a programme of exhibitions with young Glasgow-based artists including Camilla Low, Charlie Hammond, Nick Evans and Lynn Hynd. 

She then became Assistant Curator (2004 - 2006) at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, followed by Curator (2006 - 2007), working with artists including Johanna Billing, David Shrigley, Ahlam Shibli, Christopher Orr, Ilana Halperin, Bridget Smith and Jordan Baseman.

In 2007 she relocated to London where she was Exhibitions Programmer at Camden Arts Centre, London until April 2013. In this role, Watson worked closely with a number of artists on solo exhibitions including Claire Barclay, Allen Ruppersberg, Chantal Akerman, Anya Gallaccio, Christine Borland, Mathilde Rosier and Haroon Mirza. In 2009 she worked with Paulina Olowska on her selected group exhibition Head-Wig. 

Now working as an independent Curator, Writer and Artist, Watson has been busy with a project called HOUSE.

 

HOUSE is a series of collaborations between artists, dwellers, curators and writers taking place in domestic settings across London. Through public facing interventions into these private, lived spaces, HOUSE thinks through the relationships between people, spaces they inhabit, art and process.

HOUSE developed after an invitation from a friend to use their home for an exhibition. In response, co-curators Alex McDonald and Anne-Marie Watson were interested in instigating an on-going, open ended creative process involving artists and others in discussions around the spaces and places of their life and work. Over plates of food, on studio visits and in coffee shops around the city, conversations have taken place where diverse subjects have been tossed around from Inuit throat singing to rats living under the floor-boards.

Three houses were selected for the project in three diverse areas of the city; Clapton, Forest Gate and Notting Hill and six artists were chosen to take part. Through these relationships with different places, spaces and people a narrative begins to emerge which draws individuals’ stories of living in London into a shared public experience.

The six artists, through their work, are interested in space in different ways; environmental, the space of the body, intimacy, non-space, undefined spaces, exotic, hidden spaces, memory, affect and psychological effect of spaces on people.

HOUSE, in opening up these intimate places for living and working, creates imaginative spaces of vulnerability, risk and the unknown for dwellers, artists and audiences.

HOUSE 1: Anne Hardy & Stephen Setford
Preview Sat 14 Sept 6 – 8pm / Sat 14 & Sun 15 Sept 2013, 11am-6pm
19 Kinnoul Mansions, Rowhill Rd. Hackney. E5 8EB

Hallway – Anne Hardy, Soundtrack (Fieldwork), a work in progress (2013)
Living room – Stephen Setford, Torrent (2013)

Clapton (Mat Jenner) is in the midst of the regeneration of Hackney. This is a shared house, occupied by different people, differing in life-style and age.

HOUSE 2: Angus Mill & Jo Addison
Preview Fri 4 Oct 6 – 8pm / Sat 5 & Sun 6 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
62 Cranmer Rd. Forest Gate. E7 0JL

Forest Gate (Anne-Marie Watson) is on the edge of Epping Forest in the outer borough of Newham. This house is a typical terrace occupied by four people who are connected via threads of friendship and art.

HOUSE 3: Rachael Champion & Renee Vaughan Sutherland
Closing Sun 20 Oct 4 – 6pm / Sat 19 & Sun 20 Oct 2013, 11am-6pm
2 Londsdale Rd. Nottinghill. W11 2DE

Notting Hill (Daniel Fitzpatrick) is in West London. This house, traditionally built for railway workers and their families has subsequently been owned and occupied by a variety of people who have changed along with the transforming area.

For more information please visit 

housemcdonaldwatson.wordpress.com