Rosalie Gascoigne

Rosalie Gascoigne Monaro 1989 Synthetic polymer paint on sawn soft drink crates on plywood Polyptych; 130.8 x 457.4 cm (overall) Art Gallery of Western Australia Displaying 2 of the 4 panels Gascoignes artmaking practice evolved from no formal training apart from ikebana, an ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement. Her career developed through a passion for collecting wildflowers, shells, stones and pebbles, and all kinds of natural objects as well as scrap-books, cutting and later, discarded bits of machinery and discarded material. Gascoigne’s Monaro depicts the flowing plain of grassland surrounding Lake George, Canberra where she lived. Gascoigne depicts the Australian landscape from the perspective of a someone who knows and loves the land and has a strong connection with place. Despite this work being abstract in a lose way it echoes undulating hills of the rural setting and highlights values of Gascoigne’s with all the elements of life being present; air, earth, water and light. Gascoigne has utilised sliced, lettered drink crates which created an abstracted Australian landscape, with the letters representing distant trees on the horizon reassembled like a recontextualised jigsaw. These objects have a past and a memory as they are fragments of other lives and memories which gasgoine can relate to having collected them around her home. I like the gold of the Schweppes boxes... in the end I realised I had to have four panels to say what I wanted to say. As it grew, so did i. I kept thinking of the Monaro grasslands, and I thought of David Campbell saying “the Monaro rolls on to the sea.” Rosalie Gascoigne 1999. Meditative, Reconcile, Sunburn