Rosalie Norah King Gascoigne (née Walker; 25 January 191725 October 1999) was a New Zealand-born Australian

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

and assemblage artist. She showed at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

in 1982, becoming the first female artist to represent Australia there. In 1994, she was appointed a

Member of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an Order (distinction), honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Monarchy of Australia, Queen of Aus ...

for her services to the arts.

Life

Gascoigne was born Rosalie Norah King Walker in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...

, New Zealand, on 25 January 1917. She was the second of the three children of Stanley and Marion King Walker. She received her

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree from

Auckland University College , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

in 1937. She emigrated to Canberra, Australia in 1943 where she married

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

S. C. B (Ben) Gascoigne whom she had met at Auckland University. They set up home in the isolated scientific community of

Mount Stromlo Mount Stromlo (formerly Mount Strom ) is a mountain with an elevation of that is situated in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. The mountain is most notable as the location of the Mount Stromlo Observatory. The mountain forms par ...

. She was appointed a Member of the

Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gov ...

(AM) in June 1994, for services to art, particularly sculpture. She died on 25 October 1999 at the John James Hospital in Canberra.

Art

During the many lonely years spent raising her three children, Gascoigne found solace by making natural assemblages first via traditional

flower arranging Floral design or flower arrangement is the art of using plant materials and flowers to create an eye-catching and balanced composition or display. Evidence of refined floristry is found as far back as the culture of ancient Egypt. Professionally ...

then later with the rigorous Japanese art form Sogetsu

Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. It is also known as . The tradition dates back to Heian period, when floral offerings were made at altars. Later, flower arrangements were instead used to adorn the (alcove) of a traditional Japan ...

. Her work in this medium was outstanding, earning praise from Japanese master and founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, Sofu Teshigahara. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s, she had become dissatisfied with the limitations of the medium and started experimenting first with small scrap iron sculptures and later wooden boxed assemblages, all composed of materials she found while on scavenging expeditions in the fierce, sunburnt landscape of Australia. While the Australian landscape was initially a shocking change from the damp green hills of her familiar New Zealand, by this time, she had come to love the "boundless space and solitude" of her new home. Much of her art reflects this, though some also harks back to her roots in New Zealand.

Themes and influences

She said that her art-making materials "need to have been open to the weather." She thus used mostly found materials: wood, iron, wire, feathers, and yellow and orange retro-reflective road signs; which flash and glow in the light. Some of her other best-known works use faded, once-bright drinks crates; thinly-sliced yellow

Schweppes Schweppes (, ) is a beverage brand that originated in the Republic of Geneva; it is made, bottled and distributed worldwide by multiple international conglomerates, depending on licensing and region, that manufacture and sell soft drinks. Schw ...

boxes; ragged domestic items such as torn floral lino and patchy

enamelware Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between . The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating. The word comes from the Latin ...

; vernacular building materials such as galvanised tin, corrugated iron and

masonite Masonite is a type of hardboard, a kind of engineered wood, which is made of steam-cooked and pressure-molded wood fibers in a process patented by William H. Mason. It is also called Quartrboard, Isorel, hernit, karlit, torex, treetex, and ...

; and fibrous, rosy cable reel ends. These objects represent, rather than accurately depict, elements of her world. "The countryside's discards .... no longer suggest themselves but evoke experiences, particularly of landscape." Text is another important element of her work; she would cut up and rearrange the faded, naive lettering found on these items to create abstract yet evocative grids of letters and word fragments, sometimes alluding to the crosswords and poetry of which she was so fond.For instance her artwork ''Sky-light,0'

/ref> Knowledgeable and widely read, she was inspired amongst others by the artists

Colin McCahon Colin John McCahon (; 1August 191927May 1987) was a prominent New Zealand artist whose work over 45 years consisted of various styles, including landscape, figuration, abstraction, and the overlay of painted text. Along with Toss Woollaston an ...

, Ken Whisson, Dick Watkins and Robert Rauschenberg, and the

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

, Peter Porter and

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...

. She also had a fondness for the pronouncements of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

. However gradually both colour and text seemed to fade from her work, and in her final years she created meditative, elegiac compositions of white or earth-brown panels. Although working vigorously into her 80s, with occasional help from an assistant, her age at the height of her success precluded the travelling that would have been necessary to build the international audience her work deserved. Although she exhibited occasionally overseas—including the 1982

(the first Australian woman to do so), Switzerland and Sweden as well as throughout Asia ( Japan,

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

amongst others), the major holdings of her work remain in Australia and New Zealand, both of which claim her as their own. Fine examples of Gascoigne's oeuvre can be found in most Antipodean galleries. The

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

owns one of her smaller pieces.

Life

Art

Themes and influences

Major collections

References

Further reading

External links