21 August - 9 September 2014
about the exhibition
Dianne Fogwell draws her inspiration from daily observations of Australian flora and fauna, creating almost hallucinatory and dreamlike imagery of often unnoticed elements in the landscape. Her recent paintings and works on paper are a contemplation on the cycle of pollination, revealing the beauty of this natural choreography. Dianne says of the body of work; “I’ve approached this…as an exploration of this natural choreography, letting the images grow upon themselves just like memories. I started to carve linocuts of flowers and observed pollinators from my garden and expanded to images from the past in the public domain. I am not a scientist but looking at historical botanical renderings has informed my observations of the scientific and imaginary elements that came to my mind during the building of these images. I am interested in how others throughout time and circumstance saw the same flower from my garden.” Dianne’s artistic process enhances this poetic nature of her work as she allows the images to emerge on the paper, rather than from a preconceived image.
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Canberra artist Dianne Fogwell has had many solo exhibitions locally and interstate, and participated in group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including the 1st Seoul International Artist Book Fair in Korea. She has made a major contribution to the arts community in Canberra through her art practice, teaching, curating and establishing press and print studios. Her work is represented in many public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, Artbank, Australian War Memorial, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago (USA) and the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington, USA).