ARTICLES:

The American poet, Amy Lowell (1874-1925), once noted that “All books are either dreams or swords” and in the case of Dianne Fogwell’s artists books, they are both.1

In Dianne Fogwell’s voluminous and varied oeuvre, artists books occupy a significant position. Although her earliest extant artists book may date from about 1978 or 1979, and consists of eight long strips of Magnani paper stapled together at one end, all of the others, about fifty of them, date from the past twelve years, between 1989 and 2001.

Johanna Drucker, in what has become a landmark publication, argues that the artists book “is the quintessential 20th century art form”.2 In the art of Dianne Fogwell, the artists book does not slot into some convenient definition. In some of her more accomplished pieces, such as her Voyelles – 24 years, 1988, with the exquisite letterpress printing by Thierry Bouchard, and the lavish Orpheus. Beyond the poem before the memory fades, 1996, one can think of the classic tradition of the livre d’artiste associated with such names as Ambroise Vollard and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiller, but these limited edition, beautifully crafted books are very much the exception in her practice.

The overwhelming majority of Dianne Fogwell’s artists books are one offs, unique creations, frequently assembled from scavenged materials in response to a particular situation. One prominent artist described them as being characterised through their “ragged and improvised informality”.3 They are diaristic and self-reflexive, at times caught up in outpourings of angst, frustration and anger, on other occasions full of erotic passion or lost within a labyrinth of daydreams. When looking through these highly personal objects, the viewer not only senses a great intimacy, but there is something voyeuristic about the experience. It is not a totally comfortable feeling, I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder as if to ask whether it was alright that I was privy to these intensely cathartic creative moments. It is as if many of these objects were created at moments when the artist felt that she could confide her most passionate dreams only to these silent witnesses.

In one book, Family portrait: ‘Words are in the air’, 2001, she writes “On any day it starts the same. Nothing changes. Nothing changes. Nothing changes, nothing changes. Nothing changes, nothing changes. Nothing changes, nothing changes.” Accompanied by Polaroid colour family snaps, taken by her eleven year old son Reuben, who is a frequent collaborator in her artistic projects, this concertina book evokes a palpable tension as the drama of nothingness unfolds. It is a carefully crafted object of miniature proportions which slips into its own case.

In another of her artists books, The night is crowded, 1993, we are introduced to the intimacy of love making, where erotic gouache and pen and ink drawings are supplemented by a Letraset text with such pillow murmurings as “be gentle” and “even as i dream i can’t hate you”. On occasions we encounter whole journeys of discovery into the territory of penis envy, as in her She wears it, 1991, where the study of penises and of pubic hair is in the form of pen and ink sketches accompanied by collage and cut-outs. This tiny book comes complete with its own brown paper envelop.

Juvenile punk humour erodes any possible seriousness of intent in her It’s my party, 1993, where within a triangular box, neatly screwed into a party hat, is a series of rubber balloons with their cheeky greetings. In another, undated piece, Get the gun and run, the sexually quirky is united with wacky humour, as within a cloth covered box lies a candle, gold ring, and matches together with digitally manipulated images and a Letraset text.

In a number of her other artists books the erotic daydream gives way to the avenging sword of frustration and feminist anger. In the beautifully presented The price of service, 1999, the book adopts the form of a box a cutlery. Inside the box a text announces: “She glances up …”, while on each of the cardboard knives, the inscription reads “and so she cuts”. The play on words, games with concepts and expectations, are all characteristic of this artist’s work. If in her prints, which now run to about 268 limited editions, there is a whimsicality in which a Chagallian fantasy world collides with other realities, in her artists books dreams and swords combine to form a mirror of the intimate workings of the soul.

As with a number of artists who make artists books, Dianne Fogwell is quick to assert that rumours concerning the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated. What is less predictable is the shape of her books. In her work, ‘books’ which appear suspended within a plastic compact disk cover easily outnumber those composed of sheets of paper which obediently live between hard covers. Wonderful tactile handmade papers by Katharine Nix or pieces of rag and cloth bound together by the subversive stitch, not to mention rubber balloons, bra wire, butterfly wings, flower petals and recycled plastics, all take precedence over the more conventional art papers. Finger prints, Letraset, rubber stamps, spilt wax, inks and dyes are some of the preferred mediums of expression. Covers for these books include a recycled ‘Metho burner’, a snake skin, stitched cloth sleeves, plastic containers and boxes of all shapes, sorts and sizes. There is a certain urgency about her books, an impatience to be born, combined with a country girl’s gift for improvisation, where an unlikely marriage of materials and techniques frequently gives birth to a fragile innocence which asserts its right to exist.

Betsy Davids and Jim Petrillo in a famous essay on the artists book as a culinary delight, have a wonderful passage dealing with the book as desert. “As we enter the post-modern, post-literate, post-humanistic, post-avant-garde, post-mechanical age of electronic technologies, the book as we have known it may become archaic and anachronistic – a dinosaur, so to speak. Executives of corporate communication companies know that if their book division continues to be losers they will be disposed of or reformed. Yet, to its lovers, a book is a wonderful thing. An embodiment of spirit, it is a totemic object that requires a personal, intimate involvement to unlock its mysteries and reveal its pleasures. Is it possible that this visual, literary, intellectual memory device, this commodity of the soul, this mojo of Western civilisation is facing the scrap heap of history? Is this a bad dream or an opera? Enter the artist as tenor. It’s the last scene of the final act and he has just stepped off the top of the citadel. On his way down, he sings his concluding aria: ‘There are more producers of artists books than there are consumers. It’s true democracy and bad business.’ Stage left, one can make out the shadowy figure of the Muse, who points an enigmatic finger at the words projected on the scrim over the badly painted sunrise: ‘The book as it will be is yet to be discovered.’”4

Dianne Fogwell in her artists books is hinting at some of these possible future forms, while at the same time leaving behind in a beautiful, articulate and audible voice a trace of phantoms and passions which have now vanished like a dream.

Dr Sasha Grishin
Canberra, July 2001

2 SIGNATURE SONGS

Sisters. Friends or not, like other family relationships, our lives are entwined for a lifetime. Those lives are punctuated by ritual, we gather at birthdays, Christmas, funerals. These sisters were invited to a different ritual, a creative project by the youngest. They began to narrate their own lives. Conversation was recorded, photography and video captured the moment, and these have formed the basis for Dianne’s story of herself, her mother and her sisters. A portrait in a sense, of women who have each played a part in the lives of the others.

Dianne, like others in her generation, have been driven to explore this relationship. The last decade has seen several anthologies on the theme published. Feminism has shown the relationship between sisters to have been an overlooked, perhaps threatening relationship ‘ [which] like that between mothers and daughters, comes to us shrouded in silence and ignorance.’1 In the great novels of Jane Austen, for example, marriage-brokerage has been considered the primary narrative dynamic, but equally the novel is one about the bonds between sisters. It almost provides a case study to the claim that ‘...siblings go out of their way to be different because it is in their Darwinian interests to do so. Diversity reduces competition for scarce resources.’2 Despite the shared gene pool, (designer-baby dealers beware!) each sister demonstrates different feminine attributes. Competition, and collusion, is enacted in every scene and each has her own kind of victory.

But what happens when ‘real sisters’ become a story?

Soundtrack for real life

Being with our sisters there is permission to revert to childhood patterns - some comforting, some confounding. In the snippets of family storytelling the past surfaces in the shared laughter and the rehearsed punch line of a favourite anecdote. However, memory, if often triggered by, is not like a photograph.

Memory is tricky. Memory changes. First there is the incident, the snapshot, the feelings at the time. Add the extra flesh that comes with superimposed retellings. Scrap the details that don’t support your recall in the now. Memory is a paradox because, although false from the moment of inception, it does have an essential truth at its centre.3

Dianne searches amongst the images and words for the essential truth. But this will not be singular, as in the literature of the past. It is a composite. It is as much the small objects remembered by the youngest in an all-female household, as the song which now conjures her sister for her. It is this sister’s characteristic expression, as much as the formal photograph of her, the projected self-image of the elusive present. Time shifts, we change, our sisters remember.

Our sisters remember the childhood pages where we rehearsed a signature that would reflect our emerging character. They remember our fumbling teenage trials at casting ourselves in the movie of our choice: that dress, those shoes, the hairspray. We remember the tyranny of hand-me-downs, the times we were told how much we were alike. There will always be a residue of that time, but the grand innocence of it will be lost to all but our siblings.

Dianne’s sisters are the daughters of the transistor radio. Musical taste, like hairstyle, is part of how we construct our persona. Dianne draws from blues to rock to cabaret, and sings each song. The songs then form another, more poetic text, in which submerged messages appear. As we gaze at the faces, pondering on the mundane attributes, we hear each sister, hear her soundtrack.

Same song, different tempo

I went to visit my four sisters, carrying a tape recorder and my imagined map of the family. It was unsettling to learn that each sister has her own quite individual map of that territory: the mountains and the rivers are in different places, the borders are differently constituted and guarded, the history and politics and justice system of the country are different according to who’s talking.4

The Gene Pool takes a gentler metaphor than the hard terrain of landscape. Water by its nature accommodates difference. Each sister may slip into the pool, and her shape will be embraced. Certainly, the rest of the pool will be altered, as we are by our sisters. There may even be turbulence, but the politics are of negotiation. Dianne went to visit her sisters with a tape recorder. She also carried her printing tools, and her recording studio. It is she who speaks of her sisters, and it would be a different story if told by another. Like one-point perspective, the image will change, but we’re looking at the same thing.

Love is like blood.

Merryn Gates, 2001

Late in 1992, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art staged its historic exhibition Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art.

The main thesis behind the exhibition, in Paul Klee's words, was that marginalised forms of artistic expression, usually designated by the maker's social or mental status such as outsider art, maverick art, folk art, visionary art and schizophrenic art "really should be taken far more seriously than are the collections of all our art museums if we truly intend to reform today's art". Klee wrote in 1919: "Let art sound like a fairy tale and be at home everywhere. Let it work with good and evil as do the eternal powers. And let it be a holiday, a change of atmosphere and point of view, a transfer to another world which presents a diverting spectacle so that they may return to everyday life with renewed vitality."1 Artists included in that exhibition, as ones who took note of outsider art, included Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Jean Dubuffet, Claes Oldenburg, Leon Golub, A.R. Penk, Karel Appel, Niki de Saint Phalle, julian Schnabel, Jean Tinguely and Georg Baselitz. none of these artists could be described as outsider artists themselves, or as working within the broad parameters of naive art, the art of the innocent eye and the academically untrained hand, but all were aware of the potential for outsider art to open a path to creative expression and to liberate art from some of its academic baggage.

Dianne Fogwell belongs to the category of artists who, although having received a thorough professional training, employ strategies frequently encountered in outsider art within their own practice. She noted in 1996: "Every artist has a sense of reality, some create new realities while others reinforce a true reality. It is my perception that on the plate, in the book or on the canvas there is a momentary balance of forces. A space where I can be between realities. This seems to be the place where I can summon up a dream, embroider facts, narrate the ambiguous, ask questions, escape to other dimensions, celebrate life and explore the necessity and the limitations of my close human relationships".2

It is this curious ability of finding a new perspective, an unexpected hidden narrative in the rhythms of daily life, that is one of the most enchanting qualities of Dianne Fogwell's art. Although the starting point in her work is frequently an event in her immediate experience -- a turn of phrase used by her infant son or an unexpected encounter with an object in her surroundings, in her semi-urban and semi-rural homestead in Braidwood -- this event undergoes a metamorphoses as part of a strange and fantastic journey of the imagination. Academic perspective and rational compositional structures are abandoned on this journey as organic and inorganic forms combine, scale becomes a vehicle for playful invention and colour has its own associative emotion values unrelated to representational reality. Her art is built around a series of inherent contradictions, the personal intimate vision and the embroidered folk tale; the faint accidental tracings of existence and the polychromatic exuberance of ornamental forms glowing in their gilded splendour.

Born in 1958, in the rural town of Lismore in rural New South Wales, Dianne Fogwell received her training in Wollongong and at Sturt University and then moved to Canberra. Here she plunged into a frenzy of activity as a printmaker, and as an acclaimed editioning printer working out of Studio One, a public access and editioning print workshop, which she helped to establish. She was appointed to teach in the Graphic Investigation Workshop at the Canberra School of Art and later at the attached Edition + Artist Book Studio. She also established a private press, as well as a private commercial art gallery, The Criterion Fine Art Gallery in Braidwood, and has received considerable recognition as a accomplished jazz vocalist. The enormous energy which characterises her life is also a significant feature of her artistic work. There is a fecundity of invention both in the imaginary and technical means used for its realisation.

A precious quality in Dianne Fogwell's art is an intimacy of vision. At times her work appears as quite literal of her surroundings, moods and feelings. Frequently there is a quite celebration of motherhood, or a sensuous absorption in the hedonistic delight of sinking into a bath full of water or the exploration of private ritual built around rural fecundity, but these realities seem to open tiny cracks into other sorts of realities where in a dream-like state there opens up a world of folklore and Arthurian Romances, where the fantastic and the noble grotesque meet and invade the tranquillity of the Australian environment. On many occasions the concern in her art seems to be with the process of transition from one level of reality to another and there seems to be a tantalising play with the sense of the waking dream. There seems to be awareness that beyond the here and now lies another dimension, one where daydreams may appear as more real than the tangible reality outside. In her art she often plays with these different perceptions of being and existence.

In a number of Dianne Fogwell's earlier prints such as The Messenger and Head into Paradise, both of 1989, the etchings have been manipulated with hand colouring and gold leaf to produce an exotic and dazzling surface. The rich ornate surfaces dissolve into a sea of colour which like glowing embroidery or oriental miniatures seem to narrate an ambiguous scarred iconography. Some of her more recent prints such as the etching Winters Harvest 1994, revisit the fantastic of folk-lore and dreams where the tapestry appears bereft of its unicorn and the scene is presided over by a strange ritualistic animal.

The experience of motherhood has had a profound impact on Dianne Fogwell's art. Her etching First Child 1990, and the etching a la poupee, Constellation Mother 1990, are both a celebration of birth and fertility. The work oscillates between a starkness of imagery and an almost euphoric joy in the life forces in nature. At times her work appears as diaristic, intimate, yet descriptively explicit, while it is autobiographical, it also opens itself up to broader and more universal interpretations.

Some of Dianne Fogwell's prints, including the exquisite etchings Blessed Moments 1993, The Swing 1994, and the aquatint and drypoint a la poupee, Afternoon Dreaming 1994, have a whimsicality, playfulness and the quality of celestial vision. They bare witness the coming together of a consummate technician and of a lyrical and sensuous imagination of considerable power.

Dianne Fogwell's prints engage the quality of excitement, which comes with exploration and discovery. Starting with the mundane reality her work involves a flight into the territory usually reserved for outsiders, into a realm where dream and desire unite and create a new reality, in which the beholder can both find and lose himself. Her art shares a philosophy once articulated by Jean Dubuffet: "Art does not lie down on the bed that is made for it; it runs away as soon as one says its name; it loves to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called".3


Sasha Grishin 1998