Botanically Porcelain​
A Major Darwin Art Project

An exciting grant supported project to produce a new body of work: a massive floor installation of botanically inspired porcelain forms.
Community involvement through workshops and open studio sessions will build a following for the project as it progresses and will culminate in the exhibition of the final work and a separate exhibition of supporting work to explain the processes involved. A community artwork, a botanically textured mosaic will create a third related artwork for permanent installation in the George Brown Darwin Botanical Gardens.

Garden of Alchemy​
Tactile Arts Gallery Space, 19 Gonacher Street, Fannie Bay, Darwin. 
30th April -16th May 2021

The Garden of Alchemy is Dawn Beasley’s third solo exhibition at Tactile Arts and celebrates the culmination of a six-month Artist in Residency in the Tactile studios.
This body of work continues to explore Dawn’s preoccupation with the wonders of the botanical world and specifically the danger of viewing the world as a resource bank of assets rather than as the life-support system that is crucial to our own survival.

This exhibition honours the tenacity of life. It celebrates survival against the odds and the fact that this incredible planet will continue to be a place of awe-inspiring beauty, and that it could continue to sustain us… if only we recognised where true wealth lay.

Dawn Beasley would like to acknowledge the collaboration with Fiona Pow for her contribution to the main installation with her poem, written specifically for this work, entitled “Alchemy’.

Symbiosis​
Tactile Arts Gallery Space, 19 Gonacher Street, Fannie Bay, Darwin. 
27th August -15th September 2019


​This exhibition explored the human/ natural world relationship by playing with the similarities between plant and human forms. This collection of fine porcelain and stoneware sculptures were presented as a series of installations inspired by seedpods, flower parts, coral, lichen and fungi. The minimalist colour palette of white, creams and pinks unifies the work and hints at 'fleshy' delights.

"When I started this work my focus was the exploration of growth, life and regeneration within nature, but as I studied the intricate details within plant forms I began to notice just how similar plant and human reproductive organs actually are, and this provided me with the opportunity to play around with visual double meanings to create work that hinted at both. At the curating stages of this exhibition I decided to play on this more with the development of vinyl graphics to be displayed alongside the ceramic works. These 'plant labels' full of double entendres added to the visual play of human/nature: is it or isn't it? ... and hopefully made people smile too!"

The exhibition as a whole challenged the viewer to reconsider our view of nature as something separate from us; a commodity for us to enjoy and/or exploit. We are nature, and everything we do that harms nature harms us too!

​"Symbiosis (from  Greek συμβίωσις "living together", from σύν "together" and βίωσις "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic."

7 Skins (Until envious time has fled)
​Tactile Arts Gallery Space, 19 Conacher Street, Fannie Bay, Darwin. 
18th May -1st June 2018

Intricately depicted Top End natives; Gum nuts, Golden Penda Flowers, Banksia seedpods, Paperbark leaves and Lotus, appear and reappear in different forms across different surfaces.
​Rich with ‘momento mori’ symbolism and combining processes including batik, digital pattern design, metal leaf, paint and a range of ceramic decorative techniques, Beasley’s work reveals the dialogue between artist and subject matter in the analysis of surface and process, as she explores the narrative surrounding the fleeting nature of life.