The Prime Of Rosalie Gascoigne
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 3, 1998
A new show consolidates this late bloomer as a major force in Australian art. SEBASTIAN SMEE follows the signs.
If an artist doesn't start making art until her fifties, when do you start talking about her "late period"? It's just one problem Rosalie Gascoigne presents. The curator of the Art Gallery of NSW's hugely popular Gascoigne survey over the summer holidays refrained from calling it a retrospective for fear of implying the imminent demise of this elderly, but always fresh-looking artist.
No question - any such implication would be premature. And just in case you doubted it, a show of new work is opening this week at Roslyn Oxley9, Gascoigne's dealer. The opening will coincide with the launch of a new book on Gascoigne's work (introduced by the Herald's art critic, John McDonald). And - the crest of the current wave - the AGNSW has just "borrowed" some of her work with a view to making a major purchase.
It seems crass to compare the recent progress of an artist whose work is so subtle, airy and uninsistent to a juggernaut. But with all the attention and weighty discussion directed her way over the last year, that's been about the size of it. All the more reason, then, to clear the mind's decks and look back at the work. Fresh work.
It's been several years since Gascoigne last showed at Roslyn Oxley9. But if you think now is an appropriate time, in the wake of the Art Gallery's survey, to start talking about her "late period", then Rosalie Gascoigne - with all due respect - would like you to think again. The new show is made up almost entirely of "retro-reflectives" - the rearranged reflective roadsign works in yellow and black for which she is undoubtedly most famous.
Some people may groan: the retro-reflectives are so distinctive, so instantly recognisable, that they feel tantamount to a trademark. Those who pride themselves on being intimate with all Gascoigne's work (and there's been no shortage of them since the survey show) like to be seen admiring Gascoigne's less obvious works. But to see the new show is to see how inventive an artist Gascoigne is, even with the most predictable ingredients. There's a problem: the cut-up roadsigns Gascoigne uses for these works have stopped being produced. Thus, able neither to draw nor to paint - merely to arrange - Gascoigne increasingly resembles a scavenging bowerbird in a world where the production of blue plastic has ceased. What to do? What to do ...? Nest while you can!
Like any good nest, these works are about the solidly real and the transitory all at once. The bold letters are arranged on the grid so as to hint at meaning, or else simply to scramble it. Spliced into still smaller pieces, they blur the line between pattern and notation. The titles are as crucial and pitch-perfect as ever: playful, allusive, poetic. Morning Glory, Golden Bamboo, Medusa and so on.
The big black letters that, pieced back together, would spell "PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY" are partly rubbed out in several of the works, with the rest of the surface pock-marked and weathered. These feel like the most successful works. As you sidle past, the spotlight hits them, and they dazzle like a darting kingfisher catching fire ... But if you hold your position, they retain a misty, gilded glow that feels considerate on your eyes so late in the day.
What... Rosalie Gascoigne
Where... Roslyn Oxley9
When... Until May 2
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald