I am super excited about an exhibition of New Zealand artist, Peter Robinson’s work, to be held at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia in July.
Robinson's work originally explored issues of identity and ethnicity: personal and racial issues discussed in terms of his part-Maori heritage, but “his more recent work has shifted from this rhetoric and the weight of interpretation, to explore and celebrate the materiality of the mediums he works with” (Sutton Gallery website).
This latest work will hardly please the conservationists amongst us as it immerses itself in the infinite possibilities of polystyrene: pedestrian material and major pollutant. It’s an ingenious idea as the Artspace spiel explains “lightweight, negligible in mass yet physically substantial, able to pack out large spaces or articulate delicate forms, shaped in detail with sharp white lines”.
Robinson is an art schizophrenic. One minute we are party to the exquisite, delicate nature of his geisha-esque “waterfall” like drapings, the next we bear witness to the brutalist forms of a large rectangular solid, seemingly carved out by some anonymous anally retentive masculine entity and left in-situ.
It's his moment. In 2008 he won New Zealand’s prestigious Walters Prize and more recently he completed a residency at Sydney’s Artspace which produced the work “Polymer Monolith I” (pictured), not to mention various projects and shows overseas.
I wonder what he could do with my bean bag fill?
Robinson's work originally explored issues of identity and ethnicity: personal and racial issues discussed in terms of his part-Maori heritage, but “his more recent work has shifted from this rhetoric and the weight of interpretation, to explore and celebrate the materiality of the mediums he works with” (Sutton Gallery website).
This latest work will hardly please the conservationists amongst us as it immerses itself in the infinite possibilities of polystyrene: pedestrian material and major pollutant. It’s an ingenious idea as the Artspace spiel explains “lightweight, negligible in mass yet physically substantial, able to pack out large spaces or articulate delicate forms, shaped in detail with sharp white lines”.
Robinson is an art schizophrenic. One minute we are party to the exquisite, delicate nature of his geisha-esque “waterfall” like drapings, the next we bear witness to the brutalist forms of a large rectangular solid, seemingly carved out by some anonymous anally retentive masculine entity and left in-situ.
It's his moment. In 2008 he won New Zealand’s prestigious Walters Prize and more recently he completed a residency at Sydney’s Artspace which produced the work “Polymer Monolith I” (pictured), not to mention various projects and shows overseas.
I wonder what he could do with my bean bag fill?