The Garden 2007

Born in the USA in 1960, educated in the UK and later Australia (BA Fine Art), Adriane Strampp lives in Australia and travels regularly to Italy. During the last 20 years Strampp's work has been based on The Dress; beginning with wedding dresses, and later moving on to 16th and 17th century costume. Typically these large canvases were of a single dress standing alone in dark gardens, or moody interiors, always with the body 'in absentia'. They were haunting and evocative, the dresses although 'empty' had a strong sense of their owner’s presence. Strampp's new work concerns old images, in a new and intimate light. Strampp has taken favourite dresses and re-worked selected details to fill the entire canvas. Fragments of a dress, and portraits of the young women who once wore them. Many have been drawn from Renaissance artists such as Bronzino. The garden too, is viewed more closely but, as with the dress, the whole story is never told.