Overview
Project status: In progress
The project is distinctive in that it offers a new perspective on an historical art form - the sculptural portrait - by enacting its technical and formal processes.
Additionally, the project proposes a methodology that emphasises an eisegetical approach (the works operating primarily as a 'closed system'), rather than the exegetical forms of critical discourse that ordinarily frame the work of art.
- Research leader
- Organisational unit
- Lead unit Creative Industries Faculty
- Start date
- 1st January 2005
- End date
- 1st January 2012
- Research area
- Innovation in the performing and digital arts
Mr Charles RobbDetails
The project uses the sculptural self-portrait as a central point of reference to address notions of subjectivity and representation. In this project, the mimetic program that underpins the portrait as a genre, and is the chief locus of its authority as a form, is disrupted by a variety of strategies including expression, repetition, truncation and re-orientation.
In addition to these approaches the incorporation of 'accidental' elements, derived from either resemblance or proximity to the sculptural objects, further tempers the 'mastery' that accompanies the modelling and casting process. In so doing, the project seeks to continually reassess the studio as a site of production and propose that the autogenous nature of the contemporary studio paradoxically constitutes an 'intelligence' distinct from, and in many ways superior to, that of the artist.
Project description
The project uses the processes of modelling, mould-making and casting and materials that resemble plaster. Formally, the resulting works/installations are characterised by truncated, radial, amorphous and accumulative forms in compositions that emphasise a sense of fragmentation and displacement.
Publications and output
Since 2005, works have been exhibited in a variety of venues including:
- National Gallery of Australia (Canberra)
- Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane)
- Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
- Canberra Contemporary Art Space
- Linden Centre for the Arts (Melbourne)
- Latrobe University Art Museum (Melbourne)
- Museum of Brisbane Gallery
- Dianne Tanzer Gallery (Melbourne)
- Hous Projects (New York)
