Artist Success
Art Commissions 4
My aim is that this piece will create a sense of community ownership, whether amused, grateful bewildered or confronted, most will appreciate that the towns engineers and planners have made a serious effort, to install artwork between a major thoroughfare and an inner city community.
Similarly I am sure the local community will appreciate the artwork as its own by the very nature of its proximity to it and relate to its artistic and environmental message.
Art Commissions 3
The other work which I would like to discuss as a favourite project, which I believe really runs in parallel to the Absolut commission, is the Guardian commission.
This particular work was in response to a brief from the brilliant Brisbane City Council, who decided that a public artwork would be appropriate for the entrance to Kangaroo point which is a small suburb in inner-city Brisbane which was to receive a new traffic intersection and entrance without the traffic lights that had slowed down this particular entrance for a number of years.
Art Commissions 2
“The real beauty of the found object work that I create, especially when I use thongs, is that most people who view it have owned a pair, will enthusiastically scan this sculpture with the romantic and genuine notion that somewhere is an old pair of their thongs that they lost on the beach!
Art Commissions 1
In terms of an individual project I would most likely look towards a larger one or ones. My favourite project in this regard is the ‘Absolut Dahlsen’ commission. I would have to rate this alongside the Guardian project as the two most favourite projects. There are a number of reasons why I come to this statement.
Art Commissions of John Dahlsen
John Dahlsen’s work provides a vivid illustration of the way Australians view the temporary nature of materials and the effect their behaviour has on the environment. Culturally Australians tend to see themselves as beach lovers, yet continue to waste and discard into the seas and waterways, this harks to the central theme in Ecologic, that actions we take have an effect.
Recycled Art 4 – John Dahlsen
I continue to make works made from recycled materials including works from driftwood. I see the whole field is being wide open for me in my chosen material whatever that is. Mostly I work with recycled materials because I find them tremendously satisfying to work with, I love the look of most recycled materials.
Recycled Art 3 – John Dahlsen
I have been commissioned to make some large public artworks from recycled materials. The first of these was a brief from the Brisbane City Council. The brief was to use leftover roadside materials and make a public art sculpture as an entrance to one of its prominent suburbs, following a substantial realignment of the traffic entry to this suburb.
Recycled Art 2 – John Dahlsen.
Recycled materials for me, have been a great source of inspiration. I keep seeing various possibilities as to how I can use recycled materials in my artworks all the time. It never ceases to amaze me how many ways that we can recycle and it’s really a great thing that recycling has become so topical nowadays.
Recycled Art 1 – John Dahlsen
My personal philosophy on recycled materials has come about largely through artistic accidents upon my part. When I say this, I mean to simply refer to my own experience and story about how I began to work with recycled materials in my own art.
Environmental art interview 9
You said as a child it was quite natural for you to go to the tip and to assemble something new from discarded objects. Do you think society, as a whole is less likely to do that now? Rather than repair and reuse things, we’re more inclined to just buy a new one?
Since the 50’s there’s been a new phenomenon. We’ve never been faced with this before. Things are instant.
See John Dahlsen’s Recent Works
