Rosalie Gasgcoigne, Downbeat

Rosalie Gasgcoigne, Downbeat

 

 

Just wanted to post a little note about the header image on this blog. It’s a crop from an art work called Downbeat by an Australian/New Zeland artist called Rosalie Gascoigne. I came across her work for the first time on a trip to Melbourne this year- she had a retrospective show in the National Gallery of Victoria in their The Ian Potter Centre on Federation Square. It seems Rosalie went from having her first exhibition at the age of 57 in 1974 to becoming one of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists, being the first female artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982 .

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I was blown away by the show. I just wandered round it in a haze of joy and appreciation. Rosalie used found objects – discarded trash – to make her works.  The materials she uses are all weather-beaten and scorched and faded from the Australian sun.  She cuts up road signs, crates, all sorts. What really struck me was how much they spoke of Australia. I was on my first trip there; just two weeks into it in fact, and everything about her pieces, the colour (so much yellow! so bright and hopeful) the faded quality, the contrast between the incredible englishness of some of the domestic objects and the feeling of vast open australian rural space invoked by the signs and the crates, just screamed Australia.  Her work includes chair like pieces, floor installations and a large number of 2D wall works.

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The wall works go from bright bright yellow and black to faded and battered blues and greens. Bright and hopeful one minute, peaceful and contemplative the next. Downbeat was an immediate favourite.  It invoked the immediacy and the flow of music from across the room long before I saw the title.

The show was such a hit of talent and life that I think I was smiling for the rest of the day, and thanks to a relaxed photo policy that seems to prevail down-under I have an phone full of  pictures to re-ignite that feeling on the dullest of irish winter days. This is what great art does. Result.

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