1946-2011

Graeme Dawes was a painter, photographer, sculptor, and teacher. He lectured in photography and graphic design at Castlemaine Secondary College (1973-1991) and taught life-drawing night classes in Castlemaine. Graeme began his artistic quest as a painter in the late 60s and soon developed sculpture as his favoured medium. In the early 80s, he discovered photography as a fine art and had numerous solo exhibitions, many depicting his love of India.

Graeme played with the idea that two dimensional sculpture is a photograph of a three dimensional sculpture – he was impressed with the photographic medium’s ability to capture the ‘Grand Sculptural Arrangement’. Graeme’s work was not a photographic essay about a specific place, rather he aimed to show a shifting reflection of a state of mind; not just how he saw ‘reality’ but an exposure of his internal reality. His images are tightly controlled and composed and technically perfect, presented with humour, irony and ambiguities, revealing the complex contradictions of his life.

As a member of Castlemaine Artists Co-op/Inc, Graeme designed all their exhibition posters (1980-92).