The document provides an overview of various artists, including their backgrounds, artistic practices, and influences, highlighting how environment and personal experiences shape their works. Key figures include Rosalie Gascoigne, Patricia Piccinini, Jeff Koons, Yoshitomo Nara, Claes Oldenburg, Henry Moore, and the Aboriginal Memorial by the Yolngu people. Themes of consumerism, ecology, and cultural identity are explored through diverse materials and styles in their art.

1. SCULPTURE

2. Rosalie Gascoigne 1917-1999
• Rosalie Gascoigne held her first exhibition in 1974 at
57 years old. In her career of 25 years she exhibited
nationally and internationally. Type and colour
featured heavily in her work until late intoher career
when earth tones were the predominant feature.
From 1949 until her death she lived quite an isolated
life with her astronomer husband in the countryside
in the Australian Capital Territory. This deeply
informed the characteristics of her art. She used
the objects she found around her immediate
environment-mostly found materials: feathers, wood,
iron, wire and reflective road signs. She also used old
drink crates and boxes. She often incorporated
domestic home wares into her work. Her art was the
reflection of the world around her. (Museum of
Contemporary Art, 2015)

10. PATRICIA PICCININI-1972
• Born in Sierra Leone Piccinini moved to Australia in 1972.
She works in a variety of mediums including drawing,
painting, video, sound, digital images as well as
sculptures. It is her sculptures that she is probably most
well known for. They comprise of diverse materials such
as silicone, fibreglass, human hair, leather, wood,
clothing and polyurethane. She is inspired by a variety
of issues, but her interest in science-biotechnology and
bioethics and questioning its relationship and impact on
society is clearly evident in her work. In turn, these
issues also open up themes of ecology, biodiversity,
species and habitat loss, which she also reflects in her
art. Piccinini investigates the line between the natural
and the artificial world. She states her real interest lies
in, '…how the conceptual or ethical issues are
transformed by emotional realities', ( Orgaz, 2007)

16. Jeff Koons 1955-
• Jeff Koons finds his subject matter in the
visual language of advertising, marketing and
the entertainment industry. He emerged during
the 80's alongside a generation of artists who
investigated the significance of art in a media
saturated era. He works in a variety of art
forms, from photographs, slick pop-art style
hyper-realistic painting, sculpture with the
intention to 'communicate with the masses'. His
artistic influences range from Dada, Duchamp
to Pop Art to Minimalism. His billboard style
paintings echo Rosenquist and he cleverly
references artists like Dali, Ernst and
Magritte. Like Warhol and Fairey, he has a
studio of artists working on his designs.
(Guggenheim, 2015)

22. Yoshitomo Nara-1959-
• Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese painter, sculptor
and draughtsman. Raised as a child in a rural
area with both parents working he spent large
periods of his childhood alone in the company of
comic books and his pets. He grew up in a period
where Japanese culture was influenced by
Western popular culture-like cartoons, these,
coupled with Japanese Manga and animated
television shows shaped the nature of his work.
With a distinctly Japanese pop aesthetic most of
his subject matter has been refined to simplified
child figures with menacing stares and ‘cute’
animals. His paintings have a muted, pastel like
palette, most often comprising of a single
subject.(Museum of Modern Art, 2015)

28. Claes Oldenburg 1929-
• Claes Oldenburg is an American sculptor, printmaker,
performance artist, draughtsman and writer. He was
a prominent artist during the Pop Art movement. His
subject matter reflected the ever growing
consumerist culture of the period. His show, 'The
Store', featured brightly painted plaster reliefs and
sculptures of commercially manufactured objects.
This show was repeated in an actual shop front where
he sold plaster replicas of foodstuffs. He became
interested in exploring and extending the concept of
art and site and soon started creating monumental
artworks in external spaces and by the 1970's was
focusing on large scale commissioned installations in
public spaces. (MoMa, 2015)

34. Henry Moore 1898-1986
• Moore was one of the most important British
sculptors of the 20th century His work was
primarily shaped by the human body and nature-in
the form of pebbles, shells and bones and although
influenced by European artists such as Picasso,
Arp, Brancusi and Giacometti he was also
influenced by non western art. Often his forms
incorporated 'holes', and during the 1930's he
became more interested in the Constructivist and
Surrealist art movements, his work reflecting a
more abstract aestheticism. At the heart of
Moore's approach was direct carving, a practice
derived not only from European art but from non -
Western art. He all but discarded the process of
modelling and casting preferring to work on
materials directly. (The Art Story, 2015)

39. The Aboriginal Memorial-Yolngu people of
Central and Eastern Arnhem Land
• The Aboriginal Memorial installation of 200 hollow log
coffins from Central Arnhem Land commemorates all
indigenous people who, since 1788, have lost their lives
defending their land. In such it is a war memorial and also
a historical statement. The path through the Memorial
represents the course of the Glyde River estuary which
winds through the Arafura Swamp to the sea. The hollow
log coffins are roughly positioned in relation to where the
artists' clans live along the river. The different painting
styles relate to the 9 different artists' social clans which
link people by or to a common ancestor, land, language and
strict social affiliations. Each clan’s designs are their
inheritance, use permitted only by those belonging to
that group. It is the artist’s copyright over imagery.
‘Yolngu’means human beings. The designs in the Memorial
are the same themes that these artists paint on bark and
on their bodies in ceremony. (National Gallery of
Australia, 2015)

41. All these artists are inspired by their
environment, whether it be where they live,
their personal connection to their environment,
the issues of contemporary society, or a
reflection of the society they grew up in.
Their artworks reflect the individual artist’s
interests. They use a variety of materials from
found items, wood, papier mache, plaster,
metal to silicon, plastic, cloth and glass. Go to
Task 10 in the VCE blog and read about your
next task. Also, check out the Sculpture links
under ‘Interesting Links’

42. Glossary-Common terms-find
definitions
• Armature
• Bronze
• Cast
• Coiling
• Lost Wax
• Fire
• Alginate
• Alloy
• Almaloy Wire
• Soldering
• Slip
• Maquette