Lilla Watson

Who is Lilla Watson?

Lilla Watson is an Indigenous Australian or Murri visual artist, activist and academic working in the field of Women's issues and Aboriginal epistemology.

Lilla Watson is a Gangulu woman who grew up on the Dawson River Central Queensland her 'Mother's Mother's country'. Moving to Brisbane in the late 1960s, she and other members of her family have become well known through their involvement in the Indigenous community. Watson worked at the University of Queensland for ten years, the last six as Lecturer in Aboriginal Welfare Studies within the Social Work Department at the University of Queensland where she developed inter-disciplinary courses on Aboriginal perspectives. Watson has also held membership on the university senate, and has since retired.

Watson has served as the Inaugural President of the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency, was a founding member of the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, and was a President of the Aboriginal and Islander Independent School Board [Acacia Ridge]. She has acted as a consultant and a member of working groups, panels and selection committees for many Government and non-Government bodies.

After leaving her lecturer post in 1990's she developed her own medium for visual art: elaborate patterns of hundreds of holes scorched in layers of paper, pieces she calls "burnings." Many of her works draw their themes from traditional Aboriginal art and the landscape of Queensland. Watson describes her work as having an "ants eyeview", looking up through roots and foliage from beneath the ground, looking up through the earth, the "Land". As an artist, Watson has developed portrayals of her cultural and spiritual identity that are admired nationally and internationally.