About

Wendy Dawes (b. 1981, Beaudesert) is a Canberra-based artist working primarily with printmedia, investigating individual and collective memory and the fallibility of both.

Currently completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Printmedia and Drawing), Dawes explores and responds to the materiality of paper, frequently using the fold as a trope for the making, keeping, obscuration and loss of memory. Dawes draws inspiration from the Process Art movement, linking the physical act of making to the inherent qualities of the material. Using pattern, repetition and randomization within the grid, Dawes also references minimalist conceptualism.

Her most recent exhibition, fold/unfold (M16 Artspace, Canberra, 2021) included a series of works which used pages torn from books and folded into paper boxes, disordered and rendered unreadable, to express the volatile and interdependent nature of memory.

Dawes is currently investigating the concept of modern memory as an archive and the impact on individual memory.

Dawes has been a finalist in the ANU Drawing Prize in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Her work is held in private collections.