Merging his interests in politics, graffiti and art history, as well as his own personal symbolism, Patrick Dagg’s work sits within the realm of collage. Large works are made up of smaller ones – a physical manifestation of his intersecting and sometimes duelling conceptual foundations. The mixed use of crayon, spray can, neon, acrylic and oil paint in his work similarly provides a dynamic range within the work. Ideas of value and taste preoccupy Dagg’s thoughts and practice: what is acceptable within and upon the painted surface?

These works are also about labour and upon his canvases the physicality of the whole body can be perceived as it slashing, scribbling and ripping the work into existence. In this way Dagg’s work speaks to the relationship between creation and destruction, ebbing around the idea of trauma and how it manifests itself in actions.

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.