Nicola Dickson

Biography

I am an Australian artist who lives and works in Canberra. Although primarily a painter, I work with a range of media including drawing, installation and printmaking. My practice focuses on communicating the sense of wonder I feel when I encounter strange or novel things in the natural world. Small treasures, large landscapes, living creatures and remnants of past lives and stories folded into locations inspire my practice.  My art works aim to convey the fascination that all these things hold for me.

In my next exhibition Alchemies I will be exhibiting with Malcolm Cooke at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 137 Reed St., Greenway. The show will open at 6pm Friday 23 October. The exhibition will run until 12 December. 

My research under-pinning this exhibition consisted of studying of some of the natural history specimens in Macleay Collection held in the Chau Chak Wing Museum of Sydney University.  The vast scale of the collection, assembled by three generations of the Macleay family from the late 18th century, led me to question what motivates people to collect in a way that seems so insatiable. Several of my paintings explore different aspects of the desire to collect including the historical belief that observing similarities across species could illuminate the purpose of human life. The patterning included in these paintings highlights how the impulse to collect is intrinsically tied to specific cultural and historical contexts.   

Examining individual specimens in the Collection was an emotive experience that triggered a range of personal associations.  I felt a sense of awe viewing the many preserved bird skins nestled against each other in drawers; they appeared as precious relics of past life, inspiring paintings that allude to the experience of witnessing something sacred.  I felt a different response looking at the exquisite forms of juvenile mammals preserved in ethanol within antique glass jars. They appeared so vulnerable yet fascinating in their similarity to the developing human body. The comparable physical forms, subject to the same biological imperatives of division and growth, inspired the body of drawings made for this exhibition. Finally, the opulent plumage that many specimens possessed suggested a shared delight in display and bodily adornment between people and birds forming the conceptual basis of Chimera series.  

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Jude Philip and Anthony Gill for facilitating my access to the Macleay Collection which made the research underpinning this exhibition possible.

Images below left to right: Sacrifice, Gentle, Tender, each 2026, oil on linen, 35 x 30 cm