Artist Statement on Environmental Art
by John Dahlsen

My creative medium shifted from abstract painting to working as an environmental artist, as a result of an artistic accident during the mid 1990's. I was collecting driftwood, on a remote Victorian Coastline, with the intention of making furniture and stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debris.

The initial collection of thee objects, consisted of approximately 80 jumbo garden bags full of beach found litter.
When I first piled this collection up in my studio, I had friends drop by asking if I was okay!
However I knew that an unseen intelligence was at work and soon realized the potential of a giant palate. Then I began the selections of yellow coloured plastics to make up it’s own pile in the studio, then the red, then the blues, the rope & strings, the plastic coke bottles, the thongs etc. Soon the floor of the studio did resemble a giant painters palate. Seeing all this develop had the effect of sewing the seed for, I later had the notion of making assemblages of each of these objects once sorted this occurred to me as a natural extension of the process I was undergoing in the studio. This whole new palette of colour and shape revealing itself to me immediately affected me; I had never seen such hues and forms before wich enabled me to make new environmental art.

Since then - for approximately 10 years, I scoured Australian beaches for found objects, much of which I found as washed up 'ocean litter'. I have since discovered this is a worldwide phenomenon, affecting beaches on a global level.

I bought these plastics back to my studio to sift, sort, and colour-code for my assemblages, sculptures and installations. As I worked with these objects, I became even more fascinated by the way they had been modified and weathered by the ocean and nature's elements. My challenge as an artist was to take these found objects, which might on first meeting have no apparent dialogue, and to work with them until they spoke and told their story, which included those underlying environmental messages inherent in the use of this kind of medium.

My work is in a constant state of evolution. I see this largely as alchemical. It is the process of nature's elements redefining the man-made that created the initial alchemy in working with these found objects, taking the objects beyond the mundane. The second step was achieved through the transportation of these plastics to my studio and the process of sorting and assembling. A further and more vital transformation took place as I assembled them. These found objects then started to tell their story and become transformed into artworks.

I see that by making this art, it is a way of sharing my messages for the need to care for our environment with a broad audience. I feel that even if just a fraction of the viewing audience were to experience a shift in their awareness and consciousness about the environment and art, through being exposed to this artwork then it would be worth it.

This stems from the fact that I believe presently humanity is at a critical point in time, with our planet currently existing in a fragile ecological state, with global warming hastening unheard of changes, all amplifying the fact that we need all the help we can get.  

This is my way of making a difference, and at the same time I’m sharing a positive message about beauty that can be gained from the aesthetic experience of appreciating art, as well as giving examples of how we can recycle and reuse in creative ways. These artworks exemplify my commitment as an artist to express contemporary social and environmental concerns.
 
By presenting this art, to the public it will hopefully have people thinking about the deeper meaning of the work, in particular the environmental issues we currently face.

I hope these works will act as a constant reminder to people about awareness.
I would like them to find enjoyment the work on many levels and find themselves becoming identified in various ways with each of the artworks they see. I also look forward to the possible discussion that these works may generate as a result.
 
I say these things as being possibilities, bearing in mind as well that comments are regularly made to me about people’s consciousness, while walking the beach, being awakened after seeing my found plastic object artworks, similarly with seeing my recycled plastic bag series, people have marvelled at the creative way I am presenting the recycling theme in an aesthetic way,

With this in mind, I have trusted leaving the final alchemy of the work to the viewer with the possibility they may experience deep perceptual shifts and have a positive aesthetic experience as they interact with my art.

I also developed new works in 2003 using recycled plastic bags as the primary medium, "Blue River" is one of my most well known works using this medium. This work was a finalist in the 2003 Wynne prize at the Art Gallery of NSW Australia. My recycled plastic bag environmental artwork is a departure from the more recognizable assemblage works in which I used plastics and other detritus collected from the Eastern seaboard, "Thong Totems" which won the Wynne Prize in 2000 being a good example. With this recycled plastic bag work, apart from wishing to express obvious environmental messages, I have been particularly interested in the brilliance of the colours and textures available to me with this medium.

I am constantly surprised to see the variations in these plastics, very much like how I am intrigued by the beach found objects I have collected over the years. The most recent example of my working in this medium was in 2005, when I was artist in residence at Jefferson City Missouri, USA. Here I made a series of totemic installations with thousands of plastic bags in clear acrylic tubes for their sculpture walk.

I imagine these plastic bags, which mostly have a lifespan of of many years, are possibly facing extinction, as governments are beginning to impose deterrents to people using them. In the mean time I am able as a contemporary environmental artist, to use these recycled materials, to create artworks which, I hope express a certain beauty, as well as containing their own unique environmental messages.

My foray into working with driftwood assemblages, began in 1998 and continued until 2004. An article described the driftwood assemblages, which I exhibited in a solo show at the John Gordon Gallery Coffs Harbour in early 2004 as follows:

 "John Dahlsen isn't your average artist. A bold statement to make but appropriate after you realize the sheer depth and determination which goes into the work this man has produced over the past seven years. Although he has been within art circles for much longer than that, it is only in the most recent years, which have seen Dahlsen create a different form of art with environmental messages and strong statements. It is 'found' object art, be that organic or inorganic.

He would be seen scavenging beaches in search of plastics, specific colours and sizes. He is also known for venturing along the edge of Victoria alone in search of driftwood. Boat trips, four-wheel-drive tours and scaling 40 meter-high cliffs, were all part of the process for this driftwood exhibition and Dahlsen admits at times there were death-defying moments grabbing the perfect piece of wood."

The work on show in the 2004 Wynne Prize as a finalist, at the Art Gallery of NSW, titled "Driftwood Assemblage # 1" was a diptych from this series.

The other focus of my environmental artistic activity over the past few years, is in the area of large-scale prints and paintings on canvas and paper. This exploration into prints was first initiated in 1999 and developed into my incorporating both screen print, digital print technology and painting in my work. It satisfied my concerns with advances in technology where I could begin to incorporate various images of the found plastics.

In 1999 I developed a series of Cibachrome photographs taken from above - a birds eye view of the found plastics, I then developed these into complex high resolution large scale works on canvas, utilising contemporary computer and screen printing advances. The development of these works immediately followed the construction of my web site, during which I was to also learn the scope of possibilities within digital media. As well as embracing the digital and screen-printing arena, it also heralded my return to painting which was my main chosen medium for many years.

The central concerns of my work are with contemporary environmental art practice. I have for many years been working with found and recycled objects, most hand-picked by myself from somewhere along the Australian Coastline. In fact it literally amazes me to think how many times I have bent over to pick up the many thousands of pieces of plastic debris that made up that aspect of my art, each piece jostled around for who knows how long by sand, sun and ocean, their form faded and rounded by the elements.

The unabated dumping of thousands of tonnes of plastics has been expressed in my assemblages, installations, totems, digital prints and public artworks. And yet, despite my outrage at this environmental vandalism, I returned to the beach daily to find more pieces for my artist's palette. In an uncanny way, these plastics, as I sorted them and arranged them in my studio took on an unspeakable, indefinable and quite a magical beauty, which always fascinated me.

During the latter part of 2005 and into 2006, I created a new body of environmental art work, a series of Synthetic Polymer paintings on Belgian linen, based on the subject matter of plastic "purges" - plastic fabricator machine end waste.

This work, considers cycles and recycling. I began re-presenting paintings of sculptures that are inherently plastic fabricator machine end waste. The use of plastic materials and their place in the evolutionary motions of recycling are important to me in constructing these images.

|I see the real need for the massive social transformations that are essential, to adequately deal with such crises as the depletion of fossil fuels and climate change. I hope this work can be a timely reminder to us all of the limited supply of these petroleum based materials, which is a direct result of our current collective global mass consumerism.

I made this new series of work, exploring the mechanics of how an object is put together, what place it occupies in a cycle of life; organic or man-made. My choice of materials having as much prominence as the end product.

This environmental art work concentrates on cycles, momentum and the multiple. In this series of work, I painted non-recyclable purged plastic objects. These objects are by products of everything plastic, they are the plastic run before or after a hairbrush, juice bottle or chair is made. They represent everything and nothing. The plastic in its petroleum state has undergone millions of years of evolution to get to this stage. And then, it is discarded as a by-product of societal needs.

Essentially I am exploring the duality of meaning and perception and the illusion that is created in between. I am presenting an image of a non-object, in a painting of an informal Formalist sculpture. My paintings create the profile of a solid sculpture, moulded and plied to present the essence of formalism. The subject of the paintings, exhibit abstract geometrical imagery and constructivist diagramming of space that is playfully organic and blob-like.

The present direction in my environmental art work which also incorporates sculpture and assemblage, is a natural evolution for me and further consolidates my return to painting, which was my main medium for many years, prior to my working for over 8 years with found objects; making sculptures and assemblages from beach found plastic litter, which were largely based upon environmental artist themes, taking society's discarded objects of the everyday and transforming them into formal compositions.

All the landscape and seascape paintings made in 2007, were painted as a continued response to our local environment.
I remember saying in interviews with the media during the late 90’s, that I hoped that one day I would see less and less litter washing up on our beaches, so that quite naturally my work would find a new direction. This has now happened – on a local level at least.  The situation on a global level has worsened considerably.

After more than 10 years of collecting beach found objects and subsequently making art out of them, I’ve naturally come now to a new form of expression, which was brought on significantly as a result of the decrease in litter either washing up or being left behind on our beaches, as well as a result of my purge painting series and exploration.

Painting the Byron Bay local seascapes and landscapes, mostly images seen by me on my daily walk around the lighthouse and beaches, are painted somewhat with a sense of urgency, due to my ever growing concerns about global warming and its impact.

The viewer can see these works have a certain unmistakable mood within each piece, which has been written about by Dr Jacqueline Millner from the University of Western Sydney:
“This play between abstraction and figuration, between synthetic/organic matter and immateriality in the purge paintings, has been applied in Dahlsen’s most recent works to landscapes — dark works whose subtle references to environmental degradation all but disappear before forcefully catching you unawares.
This tension between inorganic abstraction and emotionally charged organism lends these works particular resonance, given their inception in the politics of environmental art. They play out, in elegant and economical aesthetics, the unstable boundaries between the natural and the artificial, reminding us of Wendell Berry’s paradox that ‘the only thing we have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity’

Steven Alderton, in his Artspeak column in The Northern Star, went on to say about the new work: "John has been working on a very successful new body of work that extends from his previous enviro sculptures into paintings. They are of the places he has collected detritus for his sculptures. The subject matter also happens to be Byron Bay, a place of infinite beauty and great affection. "