Peter Robinson’s practice has traversed a wide range of material languages in the past three decades. These include his celebrated political paintings dealing with coloniality in New Zealand, his collaborative felt installations that challenged notions of hierarchy and power in the artworld, and minimalist gallery interventions that raised questions about spatial inhabitation and perception. In his recent Rag Trade installation presented in a vacant warehouse in Auckland’s Morningside precinct, Robinson seemed to draw onto space, combining mass-produced objects within the composition. Some of these elements evoked humorously melancholic human figures or echoed current world tribulations – such as climate change and social conflict. However, eschewing any taxonomy the seemingly incongruent objects sparked extraordinary interactions. Devoid of hierarchical ordering, Robinson’s sculptural components are free to connect through histories of affect, creating a web of entangled meaning. The Rag Trade drawings provide a similar visual experience. Contained in the paper’s humble nest, the drawings merge the artist’s trademark use of language with cartoon-like images. Presented is a form of automatic writing where words and images collide to suggest a kind of index of manual for Robinson’s installations.
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