Robyn Burgess
Travel and the foreign city have nourished the research of Burgess’ paintings and works on paper over the past 20 years. The city, its architecture and art have become the subject matter, but the notion of pilgrimage and travel simmer and brood as a metaphor for life…one realises that the spiritual journey is the actual journey. At home in the studio the ideas and memories accumulate and wait. But as American artist Philip Guston implied, it is best when all your ideas finally leave and you are completely alone. For Burgess, the closed flat space of the painted abstract surface will always remain a pictorial process where the medium may become the message and the narrative hovers or remains a secret. We are the stories we tell and don’t tell.
Recently, due to specific exhibitions and ideas, Burgess has combined two separate bodies of work. The architectural bridge sits alongside a webbed crinoline human structure; the latter evolved from research of Velasquez’ Las Meninas in the Prado, Spain. Both reveal elements such as the grid, shape, repetition, symmetry and rhythm. For Burgess, both demonstrate a different pace in the work whilst grappling with the structure of gesture and the layering of paint.
Burgess’ works harbour both calculated ideas and spontaneous impulses; she loves the physical properties of paint and she uses a lot of it.
Beneath: small works
Click here for artwork by Robyn Burgess
Exhibitions include:
solo
2024 Beneath: small works, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2021 The Watched, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 The Staircase, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2018 The Panic Room, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2017 Painting, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2016 The Dressmaker & the Painter, LaTrobe Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo
2012 Watching, Not Looking, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
2010 Mid Air, Bendigo Art Gallery
2009 Sleepwalker, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
2008 Elsewhere, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
2006 Skating on Thin Ice, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
2004 One City, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
2003 Pilgrimage & the City, LaTrobe University, Bendigo
300 Years of St Petersburg, Melbourne Town Hall
2002 Russia, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
group
2023 SUBSTRATE 23, Tacit Art, Melbourne
Bound Pigment: Celebrating Paint, Tacit Galleries, Melbourne
2022 TACIT Still Life Prize, Tacit Art, Melbourne
Transition, Tacit Art, Melbourne
Tacit Voices, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2020 John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery
20[2020], Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 The Affordable Art Fair, Melbourne
2018 Postcard Show, New Linden Art, Melbourne
2017 Arthur Guy Memorial Prize, Bendigo
2016 Re-group, The Artery, Warrnambool
Re-group, Waterfront Gallery, Geelong
2014 Rick Amor Drawing Prize, Art Gallery of Ballarat
Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria
2013 Body Politic, LaTrobe Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo
Postcard Show, New Linden Art, Melbourne
2011 Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Sydney
Postcard Show, New Linden Art, Melbourne
Picture This: Postcards and Letters Beyond Text, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
2010 Paul Guest Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery
Rick Amor Drawing Prize, Art Gallery of Ballarat
Raft, Allan’s Walk Gallery, Bendigo
International Art Project, University of West England, Bristol
2009 Postcard Show, New Linden Art, Melbourne
Drawcard, National Art School, Sydney
2008 Robert Jacks Drawing Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery
Cross Talk, LaTrobe Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo
Drawcard, National Art School, Sydney
Contemporaneous, Wangaratta Art Gallery