Rosalie Gascoigne

Regarded as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists, Rosalie Gascoigne brought a unique sensibility to her assemblage works, transforming the most humble and unprepossessing of materials into exquisite distillations of the landscape. With her training in the formal discipline of Ikebana complementing her intuitive understanding of materials and deep attachment to her environment, her works powerfully evoked remembered feelings and memories in relationship to the land. Her celebrated assemblages fashioned from weathered Schweppes soft-drink crates, with their shimmering black-on-gold text transformed into texture, became her most widely acclaimed creations, lyrical yet refined and resonating with endless allusive power.

Remarkably, Gascoigne did not hold her first exhibition until the age of 57. Immediately attracting praise from collectors and critics alike, she was offered a major survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1978. In 1982, she became the first Australian woman to represent the country at the Venice Biennale. Her work is now represented in all major collections in Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.