John dahlsen

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What would create with this? Yo u

Transcript of John dahlsen

What would create with this?

You

A found off the coast of

Australia

Ship wreck

1 created

‘Ship Wreck’

By John

Dahlsen

Artist

‘Driftwood

Assemblage

Number 2’By 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.

Dahlsen’s

assemblages and sculptures

began in 1998.

Diftwood

A selection of his work

‘Diftwood Art’Recycled functional

art created from

driftwood collected from Australian

beaches.

‘Rope Totem’ Abstract Recycled art created from

rope and

plastic collected from Australian beaches.

‘Three States’

Driftwood Triptych 2009

‘Driftwood

Relief’

…… more environmental Art

‘7 Buoy

Totems’

"ABSOLUT DAHLSEN"

Unveiled at Sculpture by

the Sea

Bondi 2004

‘Blue River’ 2003 Created

from recycled

plastic bags

‘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.”

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?