ROSALIE GASCOIGNE Australian, 1917-1999

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (label on the reverse); purchased by the present owner in 1990 

Private collection, Sydney

Circle, Line, Square, Aspects of Geometry, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown, New South Wales, 1 August 1994 - 30 September 1995, cat. 36

Rosalie Gascoigne’s series of about twelve works titled Tesserae were created during the period 1989-1991. Tesserae 1, 2, 3 and 4 were first shown at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, in 1989; Tesserae Y in 1992. Tesserae (singular tessera) is the Latin word for the tiny cubes of stone or glass used to make mosaics in ancient Rome. The title invokes a sense of archaeological antiquity, of found objects – also conveyed in the natural weathering of the artist's recycled materials. However although Gascoigne’s knowledge of poetry, literature, history and art history was an influence on her art, the resultant works are never overly referential. As she once explained, ‘I look for things that have been somewhere, done something. Second hand materials aren't deliberate; they have had sun and wind on them. Simple things. From simplicity you get to profundity. I am not making pictures, I make feelings… I want to make art without telling a story: it must be allusive, lyrical’. ¹

Gascoigne’s usual practice was to give titles to her works after their completion, aiming to fix her object in language without leading the audience too much. In the words of her biographer, Deborah Edwards, 'Her art is activated by the formal and evocative power of its material form. Gascoigne's use of modernist strategies, her simple but complex means of construction, those of fragmentation, re-assemblage, repetition, tessellation and compression, effect an ordering and accentuation which is also poetic in its workings. In all of this Gascoigne's processes of handcrafting are foregrounded, and communicated through an exceptional economy of means. She experiences, selects and creates, using a relatively narrow range of materials, in order to present the work to us as resonating with a virtually endless allusive power’. ²

We are grateful to Martin Gascoigne for assistance in cataloguing this work. 


1.  Quoted in Edwards, D., Rosalie Gascoigne, Material as Landscape, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, p. 7.
2. Op. cit.,  p. 11 and see p. 16.