The Ballarat International Foto Biennale Presents Robbie Rowlands

If this light can hold – Robbie Rowlands
Robbie Rowlands, If This Light Can Hold, Gallery floor cut and window reveal,
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. 2015, Courtesy of artist and Blackartprojects,
Photo: Robbie Rowlands

Robbie Rowlands
When: February 23 – March 10, 2019
Where: National Centre For Photography – 4 Lydiard Street South, Ballarat Central, Victoria 3350
Opening Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 10am-4pm
Opening Functions: Saturday 23 February 4pm–8pm | Free entry, all welcome
https://www.robbierowlands.com.au
https://www.ballaratfoto.org

The BALLARAT INTERNATIONAL FOTO BIENNALE presents ROBBIE ROWLANDS in the inaugural exhibition at the newly established National Centre For Photography.

Commissioned by the BALLARAT INTERNATIONAL FOTO BIENNALE, Melbourne based interdisciplinary artist ROBBIE ROWLANDS will undertake a three-month artist residency in January 2019, resulting in a sculptural site intervention intricately woven from the building’s internal walls and remnant furnishings.

Built in 1864 to the design of architect Leonard Terry, the historically significant Former Union Bank will now transition into its new life as the National Centre For Photography, Australia’s only regional gallery dedicated exclusively to photography.

On display for two weeks only, ROBBIE ROWLANDS invites audiences to experience this new work, contemplate the past and envision the future at a moment of historical importance for the site.

ROBBIE ROWLANDS | BIOGRAPHY

Robbie Rowlands is a visual artist based in Melbourne Australia. His work explores notions of stability and vulnerability through the manipulation of objects and environments. His repetitious precise cuts and the resulting distortions reflect the inescapable passing of time that affects everything around us. Rowlands’ works have been described as spotlighting the history, humanity and function of his subjects. His manipulated objects and spaces blur the boundaries between our fabricated world and the natural world.

He is best known for his sculptural interventions into pre-demolition buildings through to utilitarian objects such as urban street poles. Whilst studying at PRATT Institute in 1998 under the guidance of Professor Marsha Pels he explored abandoned areas of Brooklyn creating object and site interventions. These initial explorations have grown a body of work that has explored sites such as a 1950’s bus depot, a 1900’s wooden Baptist church in Dandenong, Australia through to abandoned buildings in Detroit, USA.

Writer and curator, Stuart Koop described the experience of Rowlands’ work as like removing “skin from a cadaver (or worse a living body) to show the bones – the underlying structure of nails, studs and noggins, insulation, dust, plaster…he attempts no repair, leaving a gaping incision to frame the view of the buildings prone internal structure. He exposes the integrity of tools and fixtures too by severing the key structural member in each case; one side of an A-frame ladder, the bed-frame, the leg of a chair. He cuts that very tendon which keeps a thing straight, strong, effective so that, once cut, it seems to stagger and fall.”

Most recent examples of Rowlands work includes I’m afraid this won’t last, Pre-demolition house, Separation Street (Sepo house), Melbourne (2018); Nearness, Broken Hill Art Gallery Residency Exhibition, Broken Hill (2017) Crossing the Floor, Broadmeadows Town Hall public art commission (2017) Shadows Fall, Belfield House intervention (2016); If this light can hold, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado USA (2015), Tread lightly for this ground may be hollow, Detroit, USA (2014); In-between, Wright farm Yuengroon, Victoria (2014); Merchant Cities, Substation Gallery, Newport (2014); Stem, Hazelhurst Gallery, NSW (2014). His works have been documented in magazines, art journals, international design websites and in sculptural publications including Highlife, Spacecraft 2 and Erratic by German based Gestalten Publications.