Although Rosalie Gascoigne was born in New Zealand, she moved to Canberra when she was 26 and stayed for the remaining 56 years of her life. Keeping this in mind, we can claim Gascoigne as a Canberra artist and, more controversially, argue that she was the most nationally acclaimed visual artist that Canberra ever produced.

She was also one of the most unconventional, non-First Nations artists, in her career trajectory. She was not an art school product and was quick to point out that she lacked the basic skills of draughtsmanship or knowledge of painting techniques nor had acquired the traditional bag of tricks associated with sculpture. She was also 57 when she held her first exhibition, but then continued at a pace until her death at the age of 82.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Suddenly the Lake, 1995, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, given by the artist in memory of Michael Lloyd 1996, © Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency. Photo: NGA.

From the moment she embarked on her art career with a solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, Canberra, in June 1974 and a more significant exhibition at Gallery A in Sydney in April 1975, her rise in the art world was meteoric. There was a major survey of her art at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1978. In 1982, she represented (with Peter Booth) Australia at the Venice Biennale (the first Australian woman artist to do so) and was the subject of major exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Wellington in 1983 and National Gallery of Australia in 1996.

Gascoigne was born in the same year as Sidney Nolan, 1917, however by the time Nolan turned 20, he decided that he was to be an artist and by the time he turned 50 he was offered a retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and had paintings in the Tate in London and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

By the time Gascoigne was 50, she had been doing ikebana classes (the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement) for about five years with Norman Sparnon, a Sydney-based and Tokyo-trained master who came to Canberra once a month and taught the modern, 20th-century style known as the Sogetsu school, founded by Sofu Teshigahara.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Metropolis, 1999, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gadigal Nura/ Sydney, gift of the artist 1999, © Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency, image © Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo: AGNSW.

She was married to the astronomer, Ben Gascoigne, and they initially lived at the Stromlo Observatory where they had their three children. In 1960, the family moved to Deakin and by 1969 to Pearce into a house designed to their needs.

We are now familiar with the biographies of First Nations artists, who start exhibiting publicly in their late 50s or 60s, but had actually been acquiring their skillsets gradually for decades before their public flowering. One can argue that Gascoigne for decades was acquiring skills in arranging found materials – abandoned farming machinery, road signs, battered sheets of old, corrugated iron, discarded kitchen enamelware, bird feathers and fencing wire, initially to use in her Ikebana flower vase arrangements and later in freestanding assemblage sculptures.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Cow pasture, 1992, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1993, © Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency. Photo: NGA.

The exhibition at the NGA exactingly brings together a magnificent cross-section of Gascoigne’s work from her early box-like installations, bone sculptures, the linoleum works, the lively parrot pieces to the iconic constructed landscapes from soft-drink boxes, bee boxes and reflective road signs. The exhibition includes her seas of floating rusted corrugated iron, the profoundly moving feather pieces and her late, sombre weathered formboard works made in 1999, the year of her death.

Gascoigne burst onto the art scene precisely at the moment when it was receptive to new approaches, unconventional materials and to installation art and environmental art. Her genius was to become a collaborator with the weathered elements in nature and to create an image of our environment that seems authentic and true to our experience.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Plenty, 1986, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1987, © Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency. Photo: NGA.

Throughout Australian art, there have been artists who have made us see our environment with fresh eyes, for example Fred Williams, where many of us will see a Fred Williams landscape on our travels throughout Australia. Gascoigne also rediscovered the Australian landscape and now it is difficult when we see Lake George or the sweeping plains of the Monaro, not to see them through her eyes.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Feathered fence, 1978-79, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, gift of the artist 1994, © Rosalie Gascoigne/Copyright Agency. Photo: NGA.

Deborah Hart, the Head of Australian art at the NGA, is the curator of this magnificent and definitive Gascoigne exhibition and the accompanying scholarly monograph that places her art within an art historical context. The show celebrates the profound lyricism of Gascoigne’s art – an artist who has made us see our environment with fresh eyes.

Greg Weight, Rosalie Gascoigne, 1993, National Portrait Gallery of Australia, Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2004. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, © Greg Weight / Copyright Agency, 2026. Photo: NGA.

Rosalie Gascoigne, National Gallery of Australia, level 1, Galleries 2-7, 24 October to 14 February, daily 10 am to 5 pm.

No admission charges.