In contextualizing Dahlsen’s work, Dr Jacqueline Millner from the University of Western Sydney states:
When Australian artist John Dahlsen began his littoral walks over a decade ago, he was in some respects honouring the tradition of exploring the relation between humankind and the environment through daily, ritual, embodied interaction.
In the case of Dahlsen’s practice, however, the ecological dimension was more explicit, for during these saunterings along the coast of his local area in Northern NSW, the artist would collect the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore. Dahlsen was actively harvesting from ‘nature’ the many- times-removed products of human manufacture: the raw material extracted from the earth, processed into commodity, used, discarded, and returned by the tide to human use. more...
Found object installation art: plastics,
styrofoam, nylon rope, thongs and driftwood, found objects
from Australian beaches
In his hands, the found objects he has collected
from Australian beaches and his recycled plastic
bag artworks, have become contemporary landscapes and
abstract assemblage art, contemporary wall art, environmental
installation art, limited edition prints and totems and
sculptures.
Regular exhibitions in Australia
and world-wide
He has regular exhibitions of his assemblages,
eco-art sculptures, abstract paintings, installation art,
found object digital print works and totems, driftwood art
and assemblage art sculptures, as well as cibachrome
photographs, throughout the capitals cities in Australia
and in the International art arena.
Education
& Teaching
Born in Sydney, he studied at the Victorian
College of the Arts. He has since lectured at various Universities
and at International and Australian environmental and architectural
symposiums, on environmental and installation art,
where he has also exhibited his own work. He is regularly
interviewed by television, radio and the print media.
Reviewed by John T Spike at the 2003
Florence Biennial
“With this art work, I wish I had
a chair and could look at it for a long time, because I
am certain that in his selection of what elements to put
on the different levels there is a meaning, because I never
saw work like this before…So this is the kind of work
that is very meditative, I would love to sit in front of
it for a long time. Sometimes with work that is meditative
you have the feeling that the painting or sculpture would
change at different times of the day, but I don’t have
that feeling about this work… Because curiously this
work seems to have its own internal light. The artist himself
has put light into these abstract landscapes… The feeling
I have looking at this artists work, I have a feeling of
archaeology I see all the layers of the world, all
the different people…”
(Transcript of extemporaneous
remarks made in public by John T Spike, reviewing John Dahlsen’s
artwork at the 2003 Florence Biennial).
John T Spike is an internationally recognized
art critic and author and director of the 2003 Florence
Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Commissioned & featured art
John Dahlsen's work has been both commissioned
for and is featured in, public and private collections in
Australia, Japan, Europe and the United States. Invitations
and commissions continue to be numerous, to exhibit and
make major private and public artworks for this contemporary
Australian artist.
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