Augustine Dall'Ava
If only Carl Knew No 37 2002

Augustine Dall'Ava - sculpture and drawings 1983 - 2003
16 April - 1 June 2003

The first comprehensive survey of the sculpture and drawings of prominent Victorian artist Augustine Dall'Ava will be held at the Geelong Gallery from 16 April until 1 June. The exhibition includes over sixty sculptures that span two important decades of the artist's career from 1983 to the present.

Born in Grenoble, France to Italian parents, Dall'Ava arrived in Australia with his family in 1955. Settling first in Queensland, his family later moved to Melbourne where Dall'Ava lives and works today.

Dall'Ava's carved, assembled and painted sculpture in various stones and wood, is renowned for its unmistakable style of precise, lyrical abstraction that is often said to be evocative of the dreamlike and biomorphic imagery of Juan Miro, Yves Tanguy and other Surrealist and Dada artists.

The Gallery's focus on Dall'Ava's work after 1983 recognises a shift that occurs during this period in the artist's approach to composition. After 1983, he abandons the strict geometry and rectangular framing devices of his earliest work in favour of organic and open structures that, in turn, give way to the prismatic qualities of the latest sculpture. In the late eighties, colour also became an increasingly important aspect of sculpture.

This exhibition also documents Dall Ava's major site-specific commissions at Deakin University (Melbourne campus); Australian National Korean War Memorial (Canberra); Melbourne International Airport, and the University of New South Wales.