Rosalie Gascoigne
1 April - 11 June
Challenge Bank Gallery
Free admission
Rosalie Gascoigne's approach to creating works of art was to reassemble found and discarded materials collected from he pastoral tableland around Canberra, where she lived. Her acute observation of landscape is given material shape through her work. Only interested in the secondhand detritus of our culture, Gascoigne declared, 'Beware of the nice things that you find that say nothing...I look for things that have been somewhere, done something.'
Gascoigne's early assemblages were wooden boxes with a diverse mix of worn objects such as dolls and feathers. As with all her work, these constructions of tiny enclosed worlds are built to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. Her later work is made of materials such as wooden planks and sheets of metal. These are placed in unexpected juxtapositions, and the viewer is inclined to make associations that are removed from the former significance of the materials.
Following her first solo exhibition at the age of 52 in 1975, Gascoigne went on to exhibit regularly. She became one of the country's most prominent and respected artists, and representend Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982. She died in Canberra in October 1999.
If you would like more information on Rosalie Gascoigne please click here to visit The Space (ABC Arts and Culture Online) to view a piece adapted from an Express interview in 1998.