ANN ROBINSON

ANN ROBINSON

CELEBRATING THE RECESSION 14th NOVEMBER - 14th DECEMBER 2009 Preview: Friday 13th November from 5:30pm Artist Talk: Saturday 14th November 11:30am

Milford Galleries Dunedin

18 Dowling St (03) 477 7727 www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

cast glass, size (v x ø): 365 x 469 mm 1

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 491 x 216 x 210 mm 2

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 396 x 490 x 245 mm 3

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 403 x 452 x 260 mm 4

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 628 x 175 x 170 mm 5

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cast glass, size (v x ø): 631 x 170 mm 6

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 490 x 382 x 350 mm 7

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 340 x 363 x 250 mm 8

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cast glass, size (v x h x d): 492 x 374 x 336 mm 9

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cast glass, size (v x ø): 255 x 385 mm 10

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cast glass, size (v x ø): 200 x 533 mm 11

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ANN ROBINSON - Celebrating the Recession 1 ANN ROBINSON, Antipodean Bowl (2009)

65,000

2 ANN ROBINSON, Nikau (2009)

35,000

3 ANN ROBINSON, Landscape Bowl (2009)

40,000

4 ANN ROBINSON, Divaricate (2009)

45,000

5 ANN ROBINSON, Flax Vase (2009)

25,000

6 ANN ROBINSON, Spiral Vase (2009)

25,000

7 ANN ROBINSON, Agathis (2009)

35,000

8 ANN ROBINSON, Side Carved Flax Pod (2009)

25,000

9 ANN ROBINSON, Curved Vase (2009)

29,000

10 ANN ROBINSON, Scallop Bowl (2009)

29,000

11 ANN ROBINSON, Wide Bowl (2009)

45,000

In “Celebrating the Recession” Ann Robinson presents a substantial body of work – almost a complete survey of the primary bowl and vase forms of her career.

Revealed by this are a number of fundamental continuums in her work – explicit environmental dialogues and references; the rigorous pursuit of the essence and purity of form; a broad cultural context and a South Pacific sensibility.

The exhibition title “Celebrating the Recession” is both a witty, wry reference to the recent economic environment and openly acknowledges one of the key stylistic devices of her work. Robinson uses space, set-back or indented. Forms slope backwards, and retreat. In this way, many of Robinson’s objects alter shape and substance as we view them.

Equally fundamental to her work is the use of intersecting lines – curved and linear – and the role performed by glass mass and how this interacts with light. Robinson employs colour with assurance and restraint but with a naturalistic, referential language.

The apparent simplicity of the “Landscape Bowl” belies and hides a purity of form in which the shape slides away and folds to understated rhythms. The astonishing “Divaricate” while the same form has an entirely different language in which the intricately worked surface has been decorated with raised branches and polished leaves. The naturalism of this is further explored with colour that is strongly suggestive of autumn or reminds one of kauri gum.

Robinson has also sourced key elements of her stylistic vocabulary from the natural (botanical) world and through a process of pattern refinement and simplification – including scale exaggeration and repetition – built a language that carries the visual weight of her forms with sympathetic ease. The “Flax Vase” leaves rise up stacked upon each other as if a cross-section. The tonal balance and deftness of her use of colour across the works is equally significant and apparent. In the beautiful and resolute “Nikau” and “Agathis” vases complex sensations are established by the alteration of glass mass and leaf pattern reversals.

Glass is a medium like no other – it has an internal (dimensional) space we can see and it interacts with light in innumerable ways. It changes character and nature – call it tone and substance – with the amount or restriction of light, as well as the viewing angle. The utterly extraordinary, magnificent “Antipodean Bowl” is recognisably based upon a kava bowl – (and thus has a visual context of celebration, ritual and

ceremony) but Robinson has introduced to this metaphysical concerns by restricting the colour so that it seems about to hover or levitate from the juncture of the legs and yet the base of the bowl points resolutely to the earth and thus grounds it.

The flared, slightly twisted, rising form of the “Curved Vase” is a triumph of refined elegance. As the viewer’s eye reaches the four corners of the rising and falling lip Robinson has introduced a vane sculptural detail that is a design tour de force.

The “Spiral Vase” whilst obviously the same form as the “Flax Vase” is another powerful example of Robinson’s innate ability to carry a carved line. In this – as in almost all of her work – we can feel the maker’s hand and mind at work, and view a sensibility in action that has been informed by a South Pacific tribal, agrarian aesthetic and belief that any object must declare its functionality, its reason for being, just as readily as it emerges from a continuum of European design and purity of form. It is these alliances which are built into the languages and innumerable achievements of her work, and undeniably evident everywhere throughout this major exhibition.

Ann Robinson is acknowledged as one of the great glass artists of the world and indisputably New Zealand’s leading exponent of cast glass. Her work has received numerous national and international awards, widespread and on-going critical acclaim.

Side Carved Flax Bowl (2009)

ANN ROBINSON b. 1944, lives Auckland EDUCATION 1980

DipFA, University of Auckland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2009 2008 2006 2005 2002-03 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1995 1994

1993 1992 1984

Celebrating the Recession, Milford Galleries Dunedin, Dunedin Divaricate, FHE Galleries, Kitchener St, Auckland A Trans Tasman Sampler, Axia Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia Ann Robinson, R Duane Reed, ST Louis, Missouri, USA A Sombre Take, FHE G2 Galleries, Auckland Pacific Rim: Ann Robinson's Glass, Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington Ann Robinson: Light from New Zealand, Gallerie Jean Claude Chapellotte, Luxembourg Old Zeal: New Zeal, Axia Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia Adrift, Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA Ann Robinson, Casting Light: A Survey of Glass Castings 1981-1997, Dowse Art Museum Wellington and New Gallery, Auckland Tall Poppies, Lopdell House Gallery, Waitakere A Point in Time, Masterworks Gallery, Auckland Ann Robinson: A Survey, Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA Ann Robinson at Masterworks, Masterworks Gallery, Auckland Galerie L, Hamburg, Germany From Fantasy to Function V, Kurts Bingham Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee, USA Ann Robinson, Grand opening of Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA Masterworks Gallery, Parnell, Auckland Artisan Centre, Auckland

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2009 2006 2005

2003-04 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1997

1996

1995

Luminaries, Sabia Gallery, Sydney, Australia Masterworks, milford galleries queenstown 111, with Elizabeth McClure and Emily Siddell, FHE Galleries, Auckland Contemporary Glass, Group Show, Masterworks Gallery, Auckland Garden Varieties, with Bronwyn Cornish and Fran Allison, Masterworks Gallery, Auckland Axia Modern Art, Sydney, Australia Glass Invitational, Milford Galleries Dunedin, Milford Galleries Queenstown, traveling to Auckland Museum, Auckland, Pataka, Petone, and Canterbury Museums, Christchurch Southern Exposure, NZ Soc of Artists in Glass traveling exhibition to Ebeltof, Denmark.

Is As, Landscape as a Metaphor, Milford Galleries Dunedin, Dunedin Glass Invitational, Touring exhibition, Milford Galleries Dunedin, Dunedin Transparent Things, National Gallery of Australia in partnership with the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, Australia Creativity and Collaboration, Pilchuck Glass School's 30 Years, Bumbershoot 2000 Seattle Center, Seattle, Washington, USA New Zealand Glass, Axia Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia Inaugural Exhibition, John Elder Gallery, New York, USA Art in Glass '97, Editions Gallery, Melbourne, Australia Ledbetter Lusk Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee, USA Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, WA (w/ Frantisek Vizner and Daniel Clayman) Introductions VII, Lisa Kurts Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee, USA Celia Kennedy Gallery, Queenstown Mastercast, Glass Artist Gallery, Sydney, Australia On Form, Lopdell house Gallery, Waitakere SOFA Miami Exposition, Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA The Vessel Aesthetic, Kavesh Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho, USA A Powerful Presence: Pilchuck Glass School’s 25 Years, Bumbershoot, Rainier Room at the

Ann Robinson 2010 CV

Milford Galleries Dunedin

www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

1994

1993

1992

1991 1990 1989-91 1988

1987 1986 1983 1982 1981

Seattle Center, Seattle, Washington, USA Breaking the Mold: New Kilnformed Glass, Heller Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, USA Glass from the Pacific Rim, Art Department Gallery, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA Parriott, Perkins and Robinson, Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition a Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, USA (Kate Elliott Contemporary Glass) Annual Pilchuck Exhibition, William Traver Gallery, Seattle, Washington, USA Pilchuck Glass Exhibition, SeaTac Airport, Seattle, Washington, USA Cribbs, Marioni and Robinson, Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition at Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, USA (Kate Elliott Contemporary Glass) Contemporary Kilnformed Glass, Contemporary Crafts Centre Portland, Oregon, USA Glass Now ‘92, Tokyo, Japan International Directions in Glass, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia Treasures of the Underworld, Seville, Spain The Executive Suite, Crafts Council Gallery, Wellington New Zealand Glass Review, Compendium Gallery, Auckland New Zealand Crafts Council, Wellington Australian Kilnformed Glass, touring the USA; Kurland/Summers Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Heller Gallery, New York; Habatat Gallery, Detroit, USA Australian Kilnformed Glass, An International Exhibition, Craft Council Gallery of ACT, Australia World Glass Now ‘88, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Hokkaido, Japan Stones in Glass Houses, Villas Gallery, Wellington New Zealand Expo Exposition of Craft, Brisbane, Australia Winstone Biennale, Auckland Museum, Auckland Phillips Glass Exhibition, Auckland Museum, Auckland Sunbeam Glassworks, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, Wellington Glass ‘83, touring New Zealand Fragile Art, Northern Regional Crafts Council, touring New Zealand Glass ‘81, Auckland Society of Arts, Auckland

HONORS, AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, COMMISSIONS, APPOINTMENTS 2009 2006

Installed commissioned Font, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland Life Time Achievement Award by the Glass Arts Society of America 2006 Waitakere City Arts Laureate Award 2004 2004 Arts Laureate Awarded by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2003 Guest speaker Northlands Glass Conference of CGA 2002 Elected recipient of the D.I.N.Z. 'John Britten Award' for contribution to Design 2001 Awarded the Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. ( O.N.Z.M) Guest speaker Conference ‘Transparency in Glass’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2000 Faculty; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, USA 1996 Faculty; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, USA 1991 Faculty; Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington, USA “Treasures from the Underworld,” commission for New Zealand Expo Exhibition, Seville, Spain 1990, 92 93 Guest Faculty; Carrington Polytechnic, Auckland 1990, 92 Guest Faculty; Canberra School of Art, ACT, Australia 1987 Winstone Biennale Award 1986 Phillips Glass Award Travel Grant to USA, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council 1984 Phillips Glass Award 1983, 84, 91 Equipment Grant, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council

COLLECTIONS Auckland Museum, Auckland Bellevue Public Library, Bellevue WA, USA Corning Museum of Glass, Corning NY, USA Dowse Gallery, Lower Hutt

Ann Robinson 2010 CV

Milford Galleries Dunedin

www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

Irvin J. Borowsky, Philadelphia, PA Karen Johnson Boyd, Racine, Wisconsin Robert McDougal Gallery, Christchurch Microsoft Corp, Redmond, WA, USA National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia Stadtmuseum, Gottingen, Gemany Saint Paul Companies, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K.

SELECTED ARTICLES Wood, D, Ann Robinson: Casting Mistress, Neues Glas, Spring 2010 (1/10),pp 32 - 39 Chappell, Dan, Defining Light and Space, Art News, Spring, pp 57-58 (attached) Simpson Peter (FOA ENG), An Act of Love, Art New Zealand Object Lessons,Original Art by Guild Artists, Beauty and Meaning in Art. Guild Publishing, Madison, U.S.A., pp 22 2001 Klein, Dan Artists In Glass: Late Twentieth Century Masters In Glass Mitchell Beazley Millers, Octopus Publishing Group, London, England, pp 197-198.

1999 In Review New Glass Review, Corning Museum of Glass,2/00, pp 104 - 111 1998 Edwards, Geoffrey Art Of Glass, Glass in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria pg 204 1998 Ann Robinson Casting Light,.A Survey of Glass Castings 1981-1997, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand 1996 Wichert, Geoffrey, Glass, No 65, Winter, pp. 36-39 1994 Kangas, Matthew, Glass, No 55, Spring, pp 51 1996 Layton, Peter, Glass Art, pp. 64, (illus) pp 65.

1993 New Glass Review, Corning Museum of Glass, pp 92.

1993 Sapolin, Donna, Glass Conscienceness Departures, April/May 1993, pp 76-81, (illus) pp 78 1992 Contemporary Kilnformed Glass, Contemporary Crafts Association, Portland, Oregon; pp 64-65 1992/1 Shamroth, Helen, Glass Art in New Zealand Neues Glass Magazine, pp 40-46 1989 Klein, Dan, Glass: A Contemporary Art Rizzoli; pp 208 1989 Australia Kilnformed Glass; Australia Council for the Arts and Kurland/Summers Gallery; pp. 16-17 1988 World Glass Now '88, Hokkaido Museum, Japan 1988 Ioannou, Norris, Australian Studio Glass, pp 80-92

2010 2008 2003 2001

Wide Bowl (2009)

Ann Robinson 2010 CV

Milford Galleries Dunedin

www.milfordgalleries.co.nz