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ROSALIE GASCOIGNE - The Teaparty
  • ROSALIE GASCOIGNE - The Teaparty


© Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency, 2024

PROPERTY FORMERLY FROM THE GASCOIGNE FAMILY COLLECTION, CANBERRA

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE (1917-1999)

The Teaparty 1980

Estimate: $30000 - 50000

 

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE (1917-1999)

The Teaparty 1980

weathered wooden apiary box, plastic carnival sideshow dolls and wings, rusted enameled metal utensils
82.0 x 35.0 x 19.0 cm

Provenance:
The artist
Gascoigne Family Collection, Canberra
Private collection, Melbourne

Exhibited:
From the Studio of Rosalie Gascoigne, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, 5 September - 8 October 2000, cat.4 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.36)
Rosalie Gascoigne: Plain Air, City Gallery, Wellington, 22 February - 16 May 2004, cat.5 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.34)
Rosalie Gascoigne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 19 December 2008 - 15 March 2009, cat.24 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.58)
Storm in a Teacup, Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 24 July - 27 September 2015 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.17)
Blue Chip XXIV: The Collectors' Exhibition, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 9 March - 2 April 2022, cat.5 (illus. exhibition catalogue, p.7, front cover)

Reference:
Eagle, M. (ed.), From the Studio of Rosalie Gascoigne, Australian National University, Canberra, 2000, p.47
O'Brien, G., 'Of Magpie Song, Faded Things and the Desert Music,' PN Review 159, Carcanet Press, United Kingdom, vol.31, no.1, September-October 2004, p.20 (illus.)
Gascoigne, M., Rosalie Gascoigne: A Catalogue Raisonné, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 2019, p.195, cat.188 (illus.)

Estimate: $30000 - 50000

I don’t want to paint … I find materials and assemble my work.  I will accept what living and time does to things, I don’t have to get things right, I like things that aren’t deliberate … demanding perfection leads to null and void.  In the end, things have to have vitality.  I like collecting.  I use what I find out there, take what is available from tips and what has been dumped.  Chance will provide a lot of things of the same kind.(1) 

The Teaparty 1980 dates from a critical phase of Rosalie Gascoigne’s career, when she first achieved local and international renown.  From the late 1970s, her works began to appear in major surveys of Australian contemporary art, including a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in April 1978. In 1982, Gascoigne became the first woman artist to represent Australia (alongside Peter Booth) at the Venice Biennale.  

Though Gascoigne’s work finds few parallels in Australian art, her assemblages may be viewed within the broader international context of Pop Art and the so-called ‘neo-Dadaists’ of the mid-twentieth century, such as Jasper Johns (born 1930), Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Marisol Escobar (1930-2016). Nonetheless, Gascoigne never sought to convey a political message through her art, which tended to be more subtle and elusive in its meaning.   

Gascoigne’s art has always relied on her ability to recognise the visual potential of the mundane; the disused and discarded.  Her most celebrated works consist of the most unlikely materials: soft drink crates, cable reels, roadway signage – and, as in The Teaparty, sideshow dolls and enameled crockery.  Gascoigne’s remarkable capacity for improvisation – and in turn, re-invention – has allowed her to create assemblages that are both visually intriguing and laden with poetic association.       

The Teaparty is a significant example of Gascoigne’s ‘box’ assemblages of the 1970s and early 80s, prompted by her discovery of ‘a cache of abandoned apiary boxes’ near Gundaroo, north of Canberra, in May 1973.(2) Gascoigne’s ‘bee boxes’ provided a means of containing and framing small assemblages: as she succinctly put it, ‘What I was doing at the time needed to be contained.  If you put it in a box, it didn’t fall over.’(3) As seen in The Teaparty, these works embodied a certain whimsicality and humour, born from Gascoigne’s rearrangement of found objects.  The artist recalled:

I did [The Teaparty] in a very light-hearted mood because I found two teapots the same, miles apart [in] different dumps.  I thought “Oh, those dollies, they’re having a … very joyful … picnic.  They’re … in the paddock … they’ve sat down on the teapots and waved their wings around.”(4)      

The Teaparty was retained by the artist for the remainder of her life, having been displayed for many years on a mantelpiece in her Canberra home.(5) 

Footnotes:

1. Rosalie Gascoigne, quoted in Mollison, J. & Heath, S., ‘Rosalie Gascoigne: In Her Own Words’, in Edwards, D., Material as Landscape: Rosalie Gascoigne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997, p.7
2. Gascoigne, M., Rosalie Gascoigne: A Catalogue Raisonné, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 2019, p.7

3. McDonald, V., Rosalie Gascoigne, Regaro, Sydney, 1998, p.26

4. Rosalie Gascoigne, quoted in Gascoigne, M., op. cit., p.195

5. Gascoigne, M., op. cit., p.195

 

Catherine Baxendale

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