Lesley Dickman

Lesley Dickman is an exhibiting fine artist whose practice spans more than three decades, encompassing painting, installation and site-specific work. Over the course of her career, she has presented 25 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions, while her work has been selected as a finalist in significant Australian art prizes, including the Yering Station Sculpture Award and the John Leslie Art Prize.

Dickman’s practice is concerned with the ways women have been historically represented, constructed and positioned within social and cultural frameworks. Her work interrogates the enduring influence of patriarchal structures and the narratives through which female identity, behaviour and experience have been defined. These concerns are articulated through a combination of painting and installation, often employing symbolism, materiality and spatial intervention to examine the relationship between history, gender and social expectation.

Her installation practice includes Salt and the Dress 3, exhibited at Swan Hill Regional Gallery, and Homage to Small Girls, presented at Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre, Dandenong. Both works reflect her sustained investigation into the cultural construction of femininity and the ways seemingly familiar objects and narratives can embody broader histories of power and constraint.

Dickman has also undertaken significant commissions and collaborative projects within the performing arts, including the creation of large-scale painted backdrops installed at the Victorian State Theatre for productions by The Australian Ballet and musical theatre productions including Les Misérables.

She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Monash University, having previously completed three years of Graphic Art at Swinburne University. She subsequently undertook postgraduate study in philosophy at La Trobe University, an interdisciplinary background that continues to inform the conceptual and material dimensions of her practice.

The series 2 Reality / The Daily Life of Gods brought him wide recognition - an ironic visual experiment where characters from classical paintings find themselves in the setting of everyday city life, absorbing contemporary concerns and sharing our space. Kondakov describes his artistic approach as Documentary Surrealistic Photography - a genre of documenting the impossible but so close to us all. The author continues to develop this project to this day.

Lives and works in Ukraine.