John dahlsen
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Transcript of John dahlsen
John Dahlsen A contemporary environmental artist based in Bryon
Bay. Dahlsen’s creative medium shifted from abstract painting to
working as an environmental artist during the 1990’s.
Dahlsen was collecting driftwood, on a remote
Victorian coastline, with the intention of making furniture and
stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debri.
Dahlsen intial collection resulted in 80 jumbo garbage bags. He put them in piles; yellow coloured plastics, then the
red, then the blues, then rope & strings, the plastic coke bottles, the thongs etc. Soon the floor of the studio did resemble a giant painters palate.
This whole new palette of colour and shape revealing itself to Dahlsen; immediately
affecting him; “I had never seen such hues and forms before which enabled me to make new
environmental art”.
Since then Dahlsen has been
scouring beaches looking for washed up ‘ocean litter’. The
for the artist according to him “was to take these found
objects, which might on first meeting have no
apparent dialogue, and to work with them until they spoke and told their story, which included those
underlying environmental messages inherent in the use of
this kind of medium”.
Challenge
For 20 years, Dahlsen has been holding regular solo exhibitions of his work, both in capital
cities, more recently in Melbourne at Australian Art Resources and in regional areas of Australia, including the
Gold Coast City Art Gallery, the Coffs Harbour City Art Gallery, Grafton Regional Art Gallery and Tweed River Regional Art Gallery, as well as internationally, where he exhibited at the Australian Embassy in
Washington D.C.
In December 2006 John was 2nd
prizewinner in Australia's richest Art prize, "The Signature Of Sydney Prize".
December 2007 saw John feature in an
exhibition titled "Ecological Integrity: On the Brink" at the Ulster County Community College's
Muroff-Kotler Visual Arts Gallery in New York.
A selection of his work
‘Diftwood Art’Recycled functional
art created from
driftwood collected from Australian
beaches.
‘The Guardian’ is a
public artwork which was made from recycled
leftover road construction materials.
It stands next to Story Bridge in
Brisbane.
Beauty
Dahlsen views that by making his art, it is a way of
sharing his messages for the need to care for the environment
with a broad audience.
Dahlsen is sharing his
artwork to to create a positive message about the
that can be created from recycling and reusing products.
“By presenting this art, to the public it will hopefully have people
thinking about the deeper meaning of the work, in particular the
environmental issues we currently
face.”
To learn more…...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf6vebog3Gc&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-aB6WWUWU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=
UL
Further
ConsiderationsWhat distinguishes a piece of plastic washed up on
the beach by time and water, from a work of art?
Can art shift our thinking on matters of
environmental sustainability?
Reference List
http://j-walkblog.com/old/images/driftwoodart.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf6vebog3Gc&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-aB6WWUWU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=ULhttp://www.johndahlsen.com/index.html