From desolation a new beauty can arise. This is the sentiment behind Dianne Fogwell’s new exhibition Something this way comes. Implicit in the title is the belief that, despite the twin catastrophes of major bushfires and COVID that have upended lives and imposed a new way of living on us all, something worthwhile has to come out of it.
Australian galleries - Melbourne, 8 - 26 MARCH 2022
Read MoreDianne Fogwell’s multi-panelled installation, Prescience, presents a panoramic view of the Australian landscape, highlighting both its beauty and its precarity due to climate change.
Saturday 5 March to Sunday 19 June 2022
Read MoreThe visual artists invited to make work for Harbinger share an interest in exploring the different ways that people relate to and interact with the natural world in their art practice. Drawing this work together in Harbinger offers a diverse display of artworks that engage with humanity’s complex relationship with birds.
Gippsland Art Gallery (2022), Saturday 5 March - Sunday 5 June
Mildura Arts Centre Friday (2021), 20 August — Sunday 7 November
Read MoreDianne Fogwell has long studied the effects of fire on the Australian landscape. This exhibition, she says, is “a meditation on damage and loss with hope for regeneration of both place and spirit.” Dianne’s works on paper and paintings often appear as imaginary, almost hallucinatory, dreamscapes and create a story that flows from work to work like pages of text or music.
Beaver Galleries - Canberra, 5 – 22 NOVEMBER 2020
Read MoreDianne’s artistic process reveals the poetic nature of her work as she allows the images to emerge on the paper, rather than from a preconceived image. Her inspiration derives from the surrounding landscape of her North Canberra studio, where she intuitively draws her daily observations of Australian flora and fauna. Environmental concerns play a significant role in her practice and she has long been fascinated by bees and the role they play in the important cycle of pollination.
Sydney Contemporary, 12 - 15 SEPTEMBER 2019
Read MoreThis exhibition comes from observing the changes that inevitably occur from urban development. I look at what is happening outside my front door and see a metaphor for the disquiet of the world at large. There are connections to humanity, mortality, and how we value ‘things’.
I contemplate the displacement of resident birds and other animals that are dealing with a constantly renegotiated habitat. I think about the native trees that are extracted and replaced with light rail and so-called ‘budget’ housing.
In nature, nothing remains static, there is always renewal and regeneration after a natural disaster. There is none, however, when urban development creates the dislocation of flora and fauna. I have added these new ‘refugees’ of the urban landscape to my alphabet of linocut images, observing and collecting specific specimens with these thoughts in mind.
The new specimens build like memories and are part of a collective history; the images grow upon themselves telling the story and create a new imagined sense of place.
Port Jackson Press Australia, 1 – 24 NOVEMBER 2017
Read MoreThe Art Vault, 31 May – 19 June 2017
Read MoreThis exhibition is a contemplation of the resident birds, planted and native trees in the local environment around my North Canberra Studio. I approach my images as an exploration, letting them build like memories and grow upon themselves and while making these images, Timothy Leary’s poem “All Things Pass” an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching has also been the muse, ever present in the back of my mind.
I started my alphabet of images by cutting linocuts of flowers with pollinators from mine and surrounding gardens. That alphabet has expanded to include the trees and birds. Each tree is unique, weathered, beautiful, and threatened by urban renewal. They stand strong, while the birds pay witness, against the charge of a constantly renegotiated habitat.
With these works, the print and painting come together and are part of the surface and story, some things stay while others disappear then reappear new. I have tried to keep to the essence of the poem and to “Take things as they come”, and to find peace with the environmental changes imposed by urban development. I have endeavoured to capture the understanding “that all things pass” in both nature and ourselves. To know that nature is capable and adaptable, able to regenerate into something beautiful and divergent.
Beaver Galleries, 16 FEBRUARY – 5 MARCH 2017
Read MoreBeaver Galleries, 21 August – 9 September 2014
Read MoreBeaver Galleries, 16 September – 4 October 2011
Read MoreDianne Fogwell’s practice is centred on printmaking, painting and artist’s books. Using a repertoire of familiar images, Dianne uses pared back tones to illuminate everyday objects that often go unnoticed in our daily lives.
Her works, sometimes appearing as imaginary, almost hallucinatory, dreamscapes, create a story that flows from work to work like a page of text or music. The title ‘Sanctuary’ refers to ideas of a haven a place of shelter in this instance the artist’s home and suburb and the inspiration she gains from this.
Dianne travels through her local surroundings gathering specimens, thoughts and images which she then documents through drawing, painting and carving into linoleum or wood. These observations, ideas and collected objects become the alphabet of her images.
The viewer is swept into an often dream-like journey that transports us into a surreal and joyous visual experience. Dianne has said that “I search for beauty in ordinary things and want to capture a feeling about the fragility of where I live. My images come from the cinema of sleep where intuition and knowledge have no boundaries, the space where objects merge and blend.”
In a career spanning thirty years, Canberra artist Dianne Fogwell has had many solo exhibitions locally and interstate, and participated in group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including a solo exhibition at the prestigious hanki Museum in Seoul, South Korea.
Dianne has made a major contribution to the art community in Canberra through 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; National Film and Sound Archive; Australian War Memorial; Canberra Museum and Gallery; Chicago Institute of Arts and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington.
Manyung Gallery, 12 – 30 November 2011
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