LOUISE DICKMANN
Artist Statement
I live in Western Australia and have done all of my life. I am simultaneously at home here and utterly dislocated. I can see the city's younger self in its contemporary vistas. I have grown along with the city, and my sense of who I am is entangled in its attempts to frame itself. Some mornings, when the wind is blowing from the north-east, there seems to be little between where I am standing and the quiet, conflicted places I've often stood: pastoral homesteads, roadhouses, outcrops and towns. I can't say that I know this land, but I know its stillness. I know its wind and its cold white light. And I recognise it, in its always earnest, sometimes tinny, efforts to be a Place.
Artist Biography
Louise Dickmann is profoundly moved by objects; she collects them, researches them and makes them. To understand them, she utilises a methodology from material culture studies because it affords them primacy, positioning them at the centre of concern. Whilst the object is holding court, she blurs the distinction between the work of an artist and an art historian, re-presenting the objects that she finds and making some of those that are still needed.
Louise completed qualifications in visual art at Central TAFE (2002) and Curtin University (2008) before attaining a Master with Commendation in Art History and Curatorial Studies at ANU in 2018. She worked as a Lecturer at Central TAFE from 2003 to 2017, and then began working with collections, as the Curator of the City of Joondalup art collection and Assistant at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology (UWA) in 2018 and 2019, before commencing at the Janet Holmes à Court Collection in 2020 where she is now the Collection Coordinator.
Highlights of Louise's exhibition history include The Book of Sorrows, a solo exhibition at Nyisztor Studio in 2016, as well as inclusion in Wide Open Road at Nyisztor Gallery (2020), Collective States at Art Collective WA (2018) and Show Character (PICA 2009).
Louise completed qualifications in visual art at Central TAFE (2002) and Curtin University (2008) before attaining a Master with Commendation in Art History and Curatorial Studies at ANU in 2018. She worked as a Lecturer at Central TAFE from 2003 to 2017, and then began working with collections, as the Curator of the City of Joondalup art collection and Assistant at the Berndt Museum of Anthropology (UWA) in 2018 and 2019, before commencing at the Janet Holmes à Court Collection in 2020 where she is now the Collection Coordinator.
Highlights of Louise's exhibition history include The Book of Sorrows, a solo exhibition at Nyisztor Studio in 2016, as well as inclusion in Wide Open Road at Nyisztor Gallery (2020), Collective States at Art Collective WA (2018) and Show Character (PICA 2009).