Dionisia Salas
Dionisia Salas is a contemporary artist living and working on Walbanga Country in the Yuin Nation, Braidwood, Australia.
‘I have been using the canvas as a space for automatic drawing, where physical, spiritual and less structured ideas act as a starting point. The drawings play out, compete, evolve, churn and invade; form bulges out of shape, weaves with line. Moving into paint the colour mashes together to form brown, grey and deep visceral tones that contrast with the pure, tube-squeezed and clean. In paint on canvas, my automatic drawing develops to hold outline and developed, fleshy, scrubbed, built up muscle that alludes to the physical.’
Dionisia explores in-between states of being, using the material tussle of painting to tap into areas of consciousness, subconsciousness and dream states; to play around in what is reality and what is imagined. She has exhibited regularly in solo and group, commercial, curated and artist initiated exhibitions. In 2024-25, Dionisia held two major solo exhibitions Night Jar at NAP Contemporary, Mildura, VIC and Of mouth and mind Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Goulburn, NSW.
Dionisia’s work is held in private and public collections nationally and internationally including Art Bank, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Goulburn Regional Gallery Art Collection, and the Australian National University Art Collection. In 2024 she was selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Art Prize, and her work was exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has exhibited widely in state, regional and university galleries and commercial galleries including, Sutton Gallery, Narrm/Melbourne, Watters Gallery, Gadigal land/Sydney and Grantpirrie, Gadigal land/Sydney.
Dionisia has exhibited consistently in the critical and vibrant artist-run scenes in both Berlin, Germany and throughout Australia including Pavillion am Milchhof, Berlin, TCB and Kings Artist Run, Narrm/Melbourne and Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Kamberri/Canberra. She has been awarded several competitive grants from state and national arts funding bodies and has been awarded funded residencies in Berlin and Australia. Dionisia was awarded a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours) from the Australian National University School of Art and Design in Kamberri/Canberra.