Sanctuary

Manyung Gallery, 12 – 30 November 2011

Dianne 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.