Dianne 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

This 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

The Art Vault, 31 May – 19 June 2017

This 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