Very little information is available regarding the practice of painter Rosemary Aliukonis, both online and in print, especially in the Northern hemisphere. Born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1950, Rosemary Aliukonis studied “fine arts” during the summer semester 1975 and the ensuing winter semester at HFBK. There is no record as to which class she visited or who her professor was. According to a website dedicated to Australians with Lithuanian roots, she had come from Adelaide Central School of Art where she had studied from 1968 to 1972. She is said to have received a scholarship in 1974 that took her to Hamburg.1
The website also mentions a first solo exhibition in the same year, at Adelaide’s Llewellyn Gallery, a commercial gallery with a rather short lifespan (1972-74), dedicated to Australian contemporary art.2 The database Design&Art Australia Online, with its extremely scarce information on the life and work of Aliukonis, brings up a “minor solo” at Adelaide’s Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia in 1972.3 Aliukonis must have met with a certain amount of recognition already right after graduating, as the Art Gallery of South Australia, also based in Adelaide, lists a 1972 drawing of hers that came into the institution’s collection in 1973.4
After HFBK Hamburg, Aliukonis seems to have returned to Adelaide, where she is apparently still living today and enjoying the attention of the local art scene. My online search led me to her entry with Artfacts.net that calls the 1998 South Australian School of Art Masters Exhibition at The Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide her “only verified exhibition.”5 Another result hinted at her show Watermarks (2000) at Main Street Editions – Works on Paper Gallery in Hahndorf, South Australia, announcing “new work by Rosemary Aliukonis”, that explored “the use of water as a motif for humanity, through emotional, spiritual and poetic metaphors […].”6 This resonates with the title of a work of hers that can be found in a November 2017 post by Gallery M (located in Adelaide’s vicinity) on Facebook, “Precious Dew.” The painting is dominated by the depiction of sheets of corrugated iron in the foreground, with what must be a drop of water in the picture’s center. A gap between the sheets allows for a panoramic view of Australia’s red-tinted outback with the iconic and sacred Uluru to the left.7 A January 15, 2020 Instagram post, also by Gallery M, congratulates Aliukonis for being both “The winner of the People’s Choice award in the 18th Annual City of Marion Community Art Exhibition,” and for winning the award for “Most Outstanding Artwork in Any Media.” The work, described as “embossed lino cut, gold leaf and pencil; hand finished” and aptly titled Separate and Still One, consists of seven circles that both juxtapose and encompass the heads of humans, plants, and animals, with a checkered sphere in its center that reveals a sun-like orb or nucleus at its core.8
Aliukonis has also been active as a designer. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she worked with the Flinders University of South Australia and holds responsible for the cover design of at least two of their publications on religion.9 In the late 1990s, she must have been enrolled in a master’s program at the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia. This, at least, can be concluded from a “coursework thesis,” dated August 1997. Titled Shifting Realities. Human Identity and Perception across the Interzones, it is a meditation on the effects of (war) technology on both the individual and humankind.10
This article was published in February 2025.