The Australian Women's Register

Initially, Ronksley-Pavia’s artwork delved into the human unconscious using scientific subject matter with overtones of religious and particularly ethical questions in connection with DNA cloning, inequalities and racial issues. She became increasingly interested in the mixing of science and art; in Karl Jung’s archetypes of the collective unconscious; and in symbolism.

During the early 21st Century she has moved to a more symbolic perspective, exploring inequalities in the new century. Her work centres on the use of bottle tops on which she paints intricate miniatures: often elements of the human body, blood cells, nerve cells and DNA structures. The human condition both internal and external feeds her paintings to produce art work which explores what makes us human. Like the viscera of painting, human bodies involve complexities of thoughts, actions and emotions mixed with chemical make-up of cells. These cells are incorporated into the bottle top images and attached using wire onto a painted canvas background. The painted bottle tops symbolise the microcosms of life within life; cells, growing and changing. The wire represents connections both internal and external, within human psyche and physical beings.

Her recent works comment on the simplicity and complexity of the human internal form: the origin of all humans, no matter their culture, religion, skin colour or politics. Ronksley-Pavia’s work is firmly entrenched in her belief that all life begins the same way; that the beginning of human life contains all of the genetic information (DNA) necessary to become a human; that genetic material may vary but the formation of cells occurs in the same way worldwide. She believes that any differentiation after birth is made by society.

Ronksley-Pavia ran into controversy in 2000 when she submitted her entry for the Archibald Prize – a portrait of NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan – to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The controversy centred on the amount of time the Police Commissioner was giving to having his portrait painted as opposed to solving crime problems in the notorious troubled ethnic areas of Sydney. Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph published an article questioning the Commissioner’s commitment.