Home  /  Stories  / 

Rosalie Gascoigne - Australia's most famous New Zealand artist

14 Apr 2004
Courtesy of NZ Listener by William McAloon Rosalie Gascoigne once told an interviewer that an eager New Zealand art dealer had offered to buy her all the old AA signs he could get his hands on.…

Courtesy of NZ Listener

by William McAloon

Rosalie Gascoigne once told an interviewer that an eager New Zealand art dealer had offered to buy her all the old AA signs he could get his hands on. He wanted to send them to her home in Canberra, so that she could make a batch of her characteristic assemblages with a distinctly New Zealand flavour. Gascoigne politely declined. She preferred to gather her materials herself, whether by finding them at the side of the highway or negotiating their release from sceptical roading gangs. As much as this, the idea of being repatriated as a New Zealand artist - she left Auckland in 1943 - bemused Gascoigne.

Roadrunner

Image: Highway to Heaven

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE, City Gallery, Wellington (to May 16).Courtesy of NZ Listener

by William McAloon

Rosalie Gascoigne once told an interviewer that an eager New Zealand art dealer had offered to buy her all the old AA signs he could get his hands on. He wanted to send them to her home in Canberra, so that she could make a batch of her characteristic assemblages with a distinctly New Zealand flavour. Gascoigne politely declined. She preferred to gather her materials herself, whether by finding them at the side of the highway or negotiating their release from sceptical roading gangs. As much as this, the idea of being repatriated as a New Zealand artist - she left Auckland in 1943 - bemused Gascoigne.

Roadrunner

Image: Highway to Heaven

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE, City Gallery, Wellington (to May 16).