5 July – 30 July 2017

Todd Robinson

The Wringing Core

The Wringing Core comprises sculptural, video and photographic works that continue Todd Robinson’s ongoing exploration of the conditions of audience reception; that is how we encounter the art object. This exhibition stems from two initially separate bodies of work – one a series of sartorial studies depicting the interaction between garments the artist created and sensory-tactile materials including water and sand. The focus of these video studies is the performer-participants’ corporeal responses to the materials upon their bodies. The second is a series of wooden sculptures that buckle and bend as if subject to some invisible force.

While suggestive of a wooden henge or perhaps funerary poles the objects eschew any explicit references yet subtly correspond to the body, and its articulations, if one thinks of jointed knees and elbows, and the deviations of our bodies, primarily around a central core or spine. Despite the integrity of wood as a material, these upright sculptures appear to soften, kink, and collapse upon themselves, as if unable to sustain their own weight.

In conceiving this body of work Robinson references therapeutic body practices such as meditation and relaxation techniques as well as figurative sculpture. The Wringing Core pursues a kind of corporeal address, with the work taking shape within the embodied encounter between the sculptural object and the audience. Sculptural works have been produced in collaboration with Matthew Austin, Associate Lecturer, School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney. The video work Sartorial Study: Wet has been made in collaboration with performer Zeppelin Hamilton.

Photos: Docqment

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