Patrick Dagg continues his use of collage as a vehicle to challenge accepted norms within the medium of painting. Individual paintings are made up of a combination of different sized and coloured pieces of paper, as well as different sized scraps of canvas. This allows images within works to be scaled up and down, as well as providing the artist with stacks of material, built up over time, that await their migration to the canvas. Sampling from various source materials, Dagg’s collaged components fall out of their original context, forming new ones upon the canvas.

Dagg explores the picture plane without being bound by its dimensions. Uncontrived, he works on pieces separate from each other. The artist explains: “I feel too much weight on me to just dip a brush in paint and start on a blank canvas, so with collage I am able to move between mediums and expected outcomes, capturing several points of view at once. It is instinctive work and I have found myself spontaneously returning to parts of the body – mouths, hands, faces, eyes – their meaning changes over time, but this imagery has become a personal language. The neon feels like a full stop, marking the completion of a work – the final element. It gives the work a focal point that becomes an emblem.”

Patrick Dagg was a finalist in the Footscray Art Prize 2019 and a finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize in 2018. Through partnership with Flack Studios, he has exhibited as a part of the Rigg design prize in 2019 and The Art of Dining in 2019 at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2014 he was awarded the Douglas Gordan Fellowship. Dagg’s work is held in private collections nationally and internationally. Most recently he was featured in Vault magazine’s ‘Forecast’ as an artist to watch.