Born: 25 January 1917, New Zealand
Died: 25 October 1999
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
New Zealand-born sculptor and assemblage artist Rosalie Gascoigne spent 17 years in near-isolation, developing her craft seemingly as a coping mechanism. Having moved to Mount Stromlo so that her astronomer husband could take a job at the Stromlo Observatory, she turned to ikebana, or flower arranging, as a way to keep occupied as she raised their three children. She also took up gardening, and her exposure to the Australian environment would play a significant role in the development of her sculpture practice as the ikebana evolved into sculptural assemblages of different found materials.
Like Janet Sobel, Gascoigne would later benefit from her eldest son, Martin, becoming active in the art world. Martin became friends with curator James Mollison, who would go on to help Gascoigne in her rise to prominence. Also like Sobel, Gascoigne had no formal training as an artist, but would instead cite her 50-year apprenticeship in looking. Following her highly successful first exhibition in Canberra in 1974, when she was 57, Gascoigne experienced “an exceptionally rapid rise to recognition as one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists,” per the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Among other achievements, the National Gallery of Victoria hosted a major survey of her work in 1978, and she became the first woman to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982.