Rosalie Gascoigne, Australian Artist
“Art doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from a long line of human experience”-Rosalie Gascoigne
Rosalie Gascoigne was a new-Zealand and Australian sculptor who worked and lived in Canberra. She moved to Australia when she was 26 in 1943 to marry her husband, Ben Gascoigne, who was an Australian astronomer. She was Born on the 25th of January 1917 in New-Zealand and died in 1999 on the 23rd of October in Australia. She never had any formal art training or education. Her art career began when she started flower arranging also known as the traditional Japanese art form of Ikebana yet she only became known as an artist into her late fifties. By the late 1960’s Gascoigne had become tiresome of the old art form and wanted to move onto more expressive and creative art styles as she began to realize her potential. She began using old bits of scrap metal and old wood and assembled small sculptures. She finds these materials while hiking and scavenging in the Canberra hinterlands. With this inspiration she continued to work with a wider variety of materials, all which she has found while searching around hills and forests. These materials included bright orange road signs, Drink crates, Schweppes cartons, wire, feathers, floral lino, galvanised tin and iron. In her works she mostly re-contextualizes these materials sometimes by mixing them together or taking one material apart and creating an assemblage piece on a flat plane. For example her 1987 work “Tiger Tiger” made with a mix of bright yellow road signs cut into pieces and arranged together. Rosalie Gascoigne uses her works to relate to audiences with her representation of her previous experiences of living in both New-Zealand and Australia. We can link this to the growing environmental movements within Australia and the raising awareness to recycle and go green. This become controversial issue in Australia during the 1970’s and 80’s during the height of Gascoigne’s career. Gascoigne uses materials and gives them
Rosalie Gascoigne was a new-Zealand and Australian sculptor who worked and lived in Canberra. She moved to Australia when she was 26 in 1943 to marry her husband, Ben Gascoigne, who was an Australian astronomer. She was Born on the 25th of January 1917 in New-Zealand and died in 1999 on the 23rd of October in Australia. She never had any formal art training or education. Her art career began when she started flower arranging also known as the traditional Japanese art form of Ikebana yet she only became known as an artist into her late fifties. By the late 1960’s Gascoigne had become tiresome of the old art form and wanted to move onto more expressive and creative art styles as she began to realize her potential. She began using old bits of scrap metal and old wood and assembled small sculptures. She finds these materials while hiking and scavenging in the Canberra hinterlands. With this inspiration she continued to work with a wider variety of materials, all which she has found while searching around hills and forests. These materials included bright orange road signs, Drink crates, Schweppes cartons, wire, feathers, floral lino, galvanised tin and iron. In her works she mostly re-contextualizes these materials sometimes by mixing them together or taking one material apart and creating an assemblage piece on a flat plane. For example her 1987 work “Tiger Tiger” made with a mix of bright yellow road signs cut into pieces and arranged together. Rosalie Gascoigne uses her works to relate to audiences with her representation of her previous experiences of living in both New-Zealand and Australia. We can link this to the growing environmental movements within Australia and the raising awareness to recycle and go green. This become controversial issue in Australia during the 1970’s and 80’s during the height of Gascoigne’s career. Gascoigne uses materials and gives them