Gosia Wlodarczak is a Melbourne-based performance artist with an international reputation that spans more than three decades. Her time-based work has been performed in the USA, Singapore, Belgium, England, Germany, Russia, her birth country of Poland and extensively throughout Australia since immigrating here in 1994.

Wlodarczak’s newest body of work, My Own Art History, presents a rich tapestry of ideas, which are layered conceptually and visually. The exhibition includes eight dustcover performance drawings along with seven collaged photographic prints.

Each major performance piece is compositionally ‘after’ an existing artwork that Wlodarczak has viewed and responded to. From a Byzantine Mosaic to John Brack’s The Bar, her inspiration is varied, but many works originate from major public collections around the world. The structural likeness is loosely interpreted in acrylic on linen, with the figurative subject then mapped onto the surface through drawing performance. The prepared canvas is draped over a participant, whose contours provide a 3-dimensional drawing surface to complete the works. These artworks are a visual and physical time capsule, spanning continents and decades, transcending language, and linear time.

Wlodarczak’s works are humorous, vivacious, and ambitious, a reflection of the artists personality. Her life-sized Self Portrait after Natalia LL, a celebrated Polish feminist conceptual artist, is full of bravado. The artist performed continuous drawing over her own body, at times led only through haptic feedback as she covered her face to create the drawing surface.