ROSALIE GASCOIGNE

Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney (label on the reverse)
Private collection Sydney; purchased from the above in October 1998

Rosalie Gascoigne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 23 August  - 16 September 1995, cat. 11 (label on the reverse)
Mapping our countries, Djamu Gallery, The Australian Museum at Customs House, Sydney, 9 October 1999 - 27 February 2000

Good condition. Surface distress, such as cracks, abrasions, glue marks etc. are all original.
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There is a recurrent theme of whiteness in the work of Rosalie Gascoigne: the whiteness of bone, of porcelain, of clouds, of bleached grass. It is evident in early floor installations of white swan feathers (Pale landscape, 1977, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) or saffron thistle sticks (Piece to walk around, 1981, collection Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery). Then, after the gold and scarlet grids of retro-reflective road signs in the early 1990s whiteness returns in the whitewashed panels of the installations Plein Air (1994, private collection) and But mostly air (1994-95, Art Gallery of South Australia).

The present work is one of a number of sawn wood panels circa 1993-95, originally made from white copper cable reels. The arrangement of angular shapes within a rectilinear frame is a development from the masonite fragments of Clouds 1-3 (1992, Art Gallery of New South Wales, private collection and National Gallery of Victoria), as well as recalling the various arrangements of pottery shards in boxes in the artist's proto-sculptural still life arrangements of the 1970s.

The title is typical Gascoigne cunning punning. The cut shapes - triangles with one convex curved side - could refer to the forms of acanthus flowers, with their hooded petals and their dense growth, and/or to the plant's scrolling leaves, commonly used as decorative elements in European art and architecture from Greek capitals to William Morris wallpaper.