Julia Robinson | One to rot and One to grow

JULIA ROBINSON

one to rot and one to grow CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

ONE TO ROT AND ONE TO GROW | JULIA ROBINSON PUBLISHED BY THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA INC. 14 PORTER STREET PARKSIDE SA 5063 T +61 (08) 82722682 W www.cacsa.org.au THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION ONE TO ROT AND ONE TO GROW | JULIA ROBINSON CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA INC.

ISBN 978-1-1875751-10-3 © 2015 THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA AND THE WRITERS. NO MATERIAL, WHETHER WRITTEN OR PHOTOGRAPHIC MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER

J U L I A

R O B I N S O N

one to rot and one to grow

CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

CONTENTS 9

foreword: jim moss

11

it came from below: logan macdonald

14

in conversation: julia robinson & logan macdonald

21

dancing and dying: lisa slade

25

list of works

29 works 47 biography 50 acknowledgements

Cover image: Folk death, 2014-15.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric (white velvet, linen, muslin), ink, thread, timber, gesso, cotton cord, approx 170 x 280 x 110cm. Photography by James Field

FOREWORD The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia was first established in 1942 as the Contemporary Art Society on the initiative of a handful of artists for whom a contemporary vision was integral to the condition of modern artistic practice. For avant-garde artists of this generation the pursuit of contemporaneity offered a means for not just reflecting on the world, but for forging ways of seeing and engaging with a new and changeable social order.

While the imperatives of artistic practice have evolved since that time the mission of the CACSA remains relatively unchanged from the early days of the organisation: and, that is to encourage and facilitate the inherent vitality of a contemporary vision for the visual arts.

Over the past three decades the CACSA has progressively expanded the means at its disposal to pursue its mission. In addition to annual exhibition programs and offsite projects of significance, the organisation provides a publications program that includes the production of Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Broadsheet magazine, artists’ monographs and anthologies, engaging both artists and writers in the promotion of critical practice.

The current publication that accompanies Julia Robinson’s exhibition One to rot and one to grow is indicative of a repertoire that seeks to provide an expanding platform for contemporary art practice in all its manifestations, for the ongoing benefit of an artistic constituency that is simultaneously local, national and international.

I would like to thank the artist, Julia Robinson, and CACSA Curator, Logan Macdonald, for their collaboration on the production of this project, and Lisa Slade, Assistant Director Artistic Programs, The Art Gallery of South Australia.

Jim Moss Chairperson of the Board Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

9

IT CAME FROM BELOW The desire to tell stories is at the root of Julia Robinson’s work and her most recent project One to rot and one to grow is without exception.

As such, I propose that we may better understand her work through the lens of one of Stephen King’s more popular (though less critically acclaimed) works, Pet Sematary. Within a familiar narrative framework, King’s characters act as the ‘everyperson’ in their attempt to understand a much larger force and realm.

“He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl’s tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human being’s wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die (any time!) and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother.

To herself, Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child’s hands could feel.”

Stephen King, Pet Sematary, pg 38.

Throughout this narrative, King’s protagonists endeavour to reason with and control a mystical force. Their attempt to toy with death and the afterlife through ritual and apparently illogical thought is indicative of a universal human experience. Drawing a connection with Robinson’s practice, we may see her work as a response to the finality of death and how mankind has dealt with this through various ritual practices. In Robinson’s world, we see the rules of superstition and folklore become as 11

pertinent and real as the laws of physics and accepted eventualities. Her’s is a world where the western cultural canon of religion is symbolically deconstructed and reinterpreted through anthropomorphic beasts such as the heretical goat or the sometimes sacred deer. These animal forms are often skewed, dissected and re-formed, frequently with a sense of farce and irony, as if to suggest that the devil is fond of a good laugh.

Indeed, gallows humour permeates Robinson’s practice. While her works might be imbued with a sense of menace, visual puns abound.

In One to rot and one to grow, we see the further continuation of Robinson’s fascination with narratives surrounding the end of life. In particular, this body of work focuses on gestures and rituals that attempt to break the cycle of death and explore notions of resurrection. This represents a significant shift from previous works that have dwelt more on the morbid aspects of occult folklore, its related literature, and the paranoia of the human psyche. It is through this dance with the unfamiliar and mystical that we see her work call on audiences to reflect upon their own moments of gazing into the abyss.

Echoing the experiences of the characters in Pet Sematary, the peril is not necessarily in the reality of the outcomes but the possibilities and responses that we are offered. Robinson’s works propose that the concepts of the afterlife and the occult may have become trivialized or belittled parts of human experience, in part due to religious and cultural institutions.

Importantly, her research does not focus upon any established theological doctrine; rather, it draws on a multiplicity of sources with sympathetic systems of belief. To misread her works as straightforward attempts to discredit particular religious canons would be problematic. Instead, we see a respectful, nuanced and well-researched paean to human responses to death that reaches back to pagan practices.

Robinson draws inspiration from legends, songs, myths and poems derived from the Bible and European and Scandinavian folklore. In this body of work, we see her plunder narratives of resurrection with a

specific emphasis on the tradition of the European Wild Men who enact scenes of death and revival in annual ritual performances. In this way they seek to usher in an auspicious new year and ensure a prosperous harvest whilst connecting deeply with a rich ancestry. These traditions offer an interesting counterpoint to a contemporary world that seems increasingly removed from personal experience through various forms of augmented reality; a world where through the lens of digital and social media, we confirm or communicate our existence to the greater world.

The meticulously selected objects and materials that Robinson integrates into her work are both matter-of-fact and metaphysically loaded. Her work is often characterized by a muted palette wherein materials such as hand dyed fabrics, linens, wools and raw timber operate together sympathetically, frequently augmented with delicate detailing and intricate embellishment. However, her recent works have a bold new colour palette that seem reminiscent of May Day costumes and the celebratory rites seen in folk horror films such as The Wicker Man (1973), cited by Robinson as a strong influence. These rituals signal the harvest season and the attendant implication of fertility.

If we take the time to carefully consider Robinson’s works, we as an audience are offered a unique experience – one that is grounded in a sophisticated narrative steeped in history and executed with the fine skills of a tailor. Robinson’s work speaks of a yearning to understand more of the bigger questions that underpin human existence. In doing so, it offers a chance to challenge our own perceptions of the perennial problems of life, death and everything in between.

Logan Macdonald, 2015 Curator, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

13

IN CONVERSATION:

JULIA ROBINSON & LOGAN MACDONALD

Logan Macdonald: People who are familiar with your work will often note the use of animal forms. But many of the sources you refer to focus on human acts or ceremonies - how do you see the animal form operating in your work?

Julia Robinson: Predominantly I use the animal form in my work as a carrier of meaning or as a stand in for humans or human behaviour.

Like many people, I find animals enchanting and fascinating and I have an abiding interest in how we as humans exert our dominance over them and define our relationship with them. Given that animals have long infiltrated all aspects of our lives, it is perhaps not surprising that the boundaries between us and them are so blurred. Among other things they occupy our beds, our wardrobes, our stomachs, our stories, our rituals and our imaginations. Some animals are exalted and others derided, some are deemed sacred and some worthless – we are quick as a race to dominate them, admire them, destroy them or ignore them when it suits us, but we also assign great meaning to them. These are ideas that to various degrees and in various ways permeate my work whenever I refer to an animal.

Many works draw directly on the established symbolism of a particular animal or their importance in popular, well-known narratives. The appearance of animals in stories and myths as wise, talking creatures, enchanted beings, companions, guardians, guides and even lovers, points to our complex relationship with them and our abiding desire to connect with other species. Where the animal acts as a substitute for humans performing rituals or ceremonies, it serves to extend that relationship and create new meaning through that enforced juxtaposition.

Many of the rituals I have researched in developing the exhibition

One to rot and one to grow engage the animal in a number of ways; for example, performers dress and act as animals, use dead animals as props or wear animal fur and hide costumes. By contrast the fabricated animals in my work wear tightly stitched skins resembling clothing and sometimes become costumed performers in human-oriented rituals.

This dissolution of the boundaries between man and beast may call to mind hybrid creatures in mythology, fairy tale transformations such as the prince-turned-beast-turned-prince in Beauty and the Beast or the more metaphorical transformation of the pigs in George Orwell’s

Animal Farm into political humanoids.

In a strange way, the power we exercise over animals in life is reflected in the way I use them in my work. As vehicles for my ideas they are subjected to the rules and activities I devise for them and often perform acts not naturally of their domain. I also enact a sort of softened butchery on them by stripping back unnecessary or disinteresting parts or rounding off forms until they reflect various states of wholeness and dismemberment. The themes of this exhibition prompted me to consider not only how I control their bodies and actions but their apparent fate too.

15

Logan Macdonald: In this exhibition we see an interesting balancing act occurring with works that celebrate absence and the end of things and works that celebrate presence and ‘aliveness’.

What is it about this presence that you are drawn to in light of your previous works?

Julia Robinson: It certainly represented a shift in thinking to try to actively convey a sense of ‘aliveness’ in my work. Although my animal sculptures have always felt nearly alive to me, poised as they are midtransformation, mid-bleat or mid-action, the challenge was to emphasise these qualities and convey this to the viewer. I particularly wanted to achieve a sense of the opposing states of life and death through materials and inanimate objects alone, rather than by introducing performance into this body of work.

In attempting to convey a sense of aliveness, I thought about how the animals in my work might defy death – by procreating, by coming back from the dead or by fucking like there’s no tomorrow. The rutting creatures evolved from this premise and as such they are not intended to be rude or offensive. They are engaging in the most basic animal urge and in my world, they are also performing this act symbolically or as an age-old ritual to defer the inevitable. The logical conclusion of this act might be fertilisation and new life, but I see my creatures as locked together in an everlasting ceremony. They reject death and affirm life perpetually through sex. The sex act itself (rather than reproduction) becomes the defence against death.

Similarly, the giant garlanded gourd celebrates fecundity and new growth, and echoes the cycle of life and death signaled by the cycle of the seasons. Referring overtly to a maypole it announces its presence amidst the jangle of copper bells, like a strange rural deity or the altar at which the rutting creatures worship.

Of all the works, Folk death in particular attempts to position the animal in a state of flux. Hooded and harnessed with a makeshift plough, it is perhaps straining towards or moving beyond death and into another

place. Many cultures have some version of the idea that the souls of the dead need a vehicle to transport them to the next world, and in some parts of Siberia for example, reindeer are integral to burial rites. For me the process of repeatedly staining the deer’s white velvet skin with inksoaked muslin felt much like tending to its imminent burial or preparing it for its final journey. That said, I am not at all sure where it is headed.

17

Logan Macdonald: You’ve cited such texts as The Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland by Elias Lönnrot and in particular the section titled “Lemminkainen’s Restoration”, as a source of inspiration for this body of work. Much of this text describes a fragmenting of both body and spirit and then a process of resurrection through reunification. What brought about this interest in the act of resurrection?

Julia Robinson: My interest in the idea of resurrection is a logical and natural extension of the core concerns of my practice. For some years my work has been preoccupied with the finality of death and various human responses to this inevitability. I have drawn on established belief systems (in particular my own lapsed belief system, Christianity), conventional afterlives, various aspects of the occult and rituals and superstitions associated with death.

Over the last couple of years however, I found myself increasingly drawn to words and rituals that suggest a break in the life-death cycle through the act of resurrection. Broadly speaking this may be considered a “dying and rising” motif (to borrow the term from James Frazer), examples of which occur in the folklore, customs, rituals, narratives, songs and belief systems of cultures the world over. On reflection I realised I had been familiar with this motif since childhood through various TV shows, movies, fairy tales and even folk songs I still listen to. Even before I had begun to identify it, it had filtered into my research and taken root.

In particular, I took inspiration from the costumed performers found largely across Europe, colloquially termed the Wild Men, who are keeping centuries-old rituals alive. Many of these are symbolic enactments of death and resurrection as a way of summoning back Spring from the dark depths of Winter and ensuring agricultural prosperity. These dying and rising rituals frequently centre on costumed ‘characters’ and ‘animals’ that are brutally slain then revived through performances that are boisterous, bawdy, aggressive and intrusive. Although infinitely fascinating to me, these rituals are more of a touchstone for my work than a template.

In relating the idea of resurrection to my practice I thought about what method I might enact as a sculptor – a careful, laborious process, lovingly executed with my sewing skills. In this way the evidence of the process is imperative to the idea. The majority of the narrative models for resurrection require specific acts of violence, magical ingredients, or a life-giving being in order to work. These models generally involve an instantaneous revivification and in a way require a greater suspension of disbelief. Thor’s goats for example, are restored daily from a pile of bones and pelts by a swift strike of the hammer Mjölnir. We are left to wonder nevertheless, at how exactly the body and flesh reforms given that each night the goats are eaten.

By contrast, the description in The Kalevala of Lemminkainen’s resurrection emphasises time and labour and resonated with me immediately. It describes the hero’s revival through the careful gathering of scattered parts and the delicate process of sewing. With a copper rake forged by the blacksmith Ilmarinen, Lemminkainen’s mother dredges up her son’s broken, fragmented body from the river of Tuonela and lovingly rearranges it as follows: Flesh to flesh with skill she places, Gives the bones their proper stations, Binds one member to the other, Joins the ends of severed vessels, Counts the threads of all the venules.

She then calls a maiden from the belt of heaven to: Join the smallest of the veinlets, And unite with skill the sinews.

Knit the parts in apposition; Take thou now a slender needle, Silken thread within its eyelet, Ply the silver needle gently, Sew with care the wounds together.

19

The overriding sense in this section of the poem is of an epic, painstaking ritual that is not fully conveyed in the excerpts above. The relevance to my practice lies in the emphasis on labour – the time and energy invested in physically constructing a being from many parts. The process of sewing looms large in this ritual as it does in my work.

In touching on just some of the countless motifs of dying and rising found the world over, I recognise that it is neither accurate nor appropriate to attribute the same symbolic function to all examples.

There is however, a fundamental thread that unites them as signifiers of the human desire to conquer death and it is this that draws me in. When the only certainties in life are death and taxes, these stories and rituals are perhaps an enticing tonic to the absolute end.

DANCING AND DYING In Corlata in northern Romania, not far from Ukraine, there lingers a new-year ritual where individuals don deer masks and antlers, and, for several days, repeat a performance of ceremonial dancing and dying. This custom to relinquish the old and induce the new, simply called Cerbul (‘stag’ in Romanian), was among the last of the European festivals documented by Charles Fréger for his Wilder Mann series of photographs published in 2012. Half-human and half-beast, the slain and surviving symbolic stag signals to an abiding atavism – a tendency to revert to archetype and to our ancestors. Artist Julia Robinson believes that this atavism can be found in us all.

Just like the conjoined human/animal Cerbul, the work and world of Julia Robinson is one where the grafting of the new and the old, the real and the imagined, the human and the animal and the dancing and the dying all coalesce. This hybridising can be readily seen in Rutting creature 1 where the uncharacteristically polite and vertical coital dance of the deer is also a dance with death, as the animals transform into a domestic apparatus complete with the adornment of a lampshade-like covering.

And there is something deeply amusing and downright bawdy about all this. We respond like teens apprehending the absurdity of sex for the first time. We are amused, beguiled and left wanting more. The sateen tailored fabrics and meticulously stitched draperies render the scene a strangely papal one – this primal scene carries the scent (frankincense?) of a heavily ritualised performance.

In Rutting creature 2 we sense the quivering hind legs of the stag in spite of the partial concealment of the beasts under fabric (a clever Surrealist device). More than cloth, the golden covering is like a vestment from a sacred order, reserved it seems for a particular type of liturgical dancing.

In this marriage of the carnal and the ceremonial we are reminded of 21

Robinson’s own words when she describes her work as an attempt to ‘evoke both the domestic and the barbaric’. For Robinson it is ‘this push and pull between gentility and brutality that both spurs [her] on and stays [her] hand.’

Robinson conjures her beasts into being by shaping fine wire into a naturalistic armature over which fabric flesh is sewn. There is no casting, no mould and no model. They emerge from inchoate materials to possess their own pagan power. Sometimes the hand-crafted is conjoined with found objects, as in the case of earlier works such as Marrow and Legs Eleven, with the latter now held in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection. As Robinson explains, The game of substituting parts becomes a process of material surgery. Using found or fabricated objects in lieu of body parts I become a sort of butcher, slicing off bits deemed irrelevant or redundant. Branches, poles or chairs may stand in for limbs, and body parts are rounded off to smooth nubs as the figurative form dissolves and is subsumed by foreign elements. These new components are in a state of material make-believe – mimicking the thing they replace yet still retaining their authority and identity as discreet objects.

This game of substitution frequently leads to visual puns, as in the case of Garland where an ornamental gourd screams phallic power and virility and offers itself, somewhat suggestively, to be worn. Encircled with heavy bells (another visual quip) Garland generates sound, signaling the arrival of its wearer. Bells appear frequently in pagan rituals – protective devices thought to drive away evil with sound. But more than talismanic, this work in its perverse sexuality is gently mocking.

In Death admires you a digital clock adorned with a tiny skeleton becomes a contemporary vanitas. The appearance of this figure of death, hand carved from lime wood and complete with scythe, underscores death’s role as the inevitable counterpoint to fecundity. While reminiscent of Ricky Swallow’s 2005 life-size sculpture, The Exact Dimensions of Staying Behind (also held in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection), Robinson’s work has more in common with its sixteenth century

Habsburg antecedents known as Tödlein. Meticulously crafted from pear wood and placed among other marvels in princely cabinets of curiosities, the diminutive Tödlein represented the possibility of resurrection and hope. With the name, Tödlein, translating to mean ‘little death’, the figures offer a further entendre in the allusion to a sexual or orgasmic state. Here humour returns - with the tiny grimacing figure, powerless in scale, and its incongruous steed taking the form of a plastic alarm clock, Robinson invites us to laugh back at death, at time and ultimately at ourselves. Humour, for Robinson, is another weapon in her arsenal. Like the ladders, brooms and bread, seen recently in Dark Heart, the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, humour is apotropaic, possessing the power to avert bad luck and turn away evil.

Through this now signature process of hyper-crafting creatures and animating dormant objects, Robinson exhumes our animism – and our animalism – and in doing so she resurrects our relationship with nature.

This relationship, fraught and vulnerable in the twenty-first century, is also announced through the enigmatic exhibition title, One to rot and one to grow. Drawn from a mid-nineteenth century agrarian parable wherein the farmer is cautioned to allow for the exigencies of nature, the folklore cautions the farmer when sowing his seeds to allow one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, one to grow. It’s tempting to read Robinson’s work (and the attendant exhibition title) as a critique of our current abuses of nature and our failure to heed its warnings. In our self-absorption and vanity, have we failed to protect ourselves from nature, from ourselves and ultimately from annihilation? Robinson’s work avoids such doomsday declarations. By summoning the ceremonial, the arcane and perhaps most crucially, the comedic, Robinson’s rutting creatures call on us to celebrate the continuity and inevitability of both dancing and dying.

Lisa Slade, 2015 Assistant Director, Artistic Programs, Art Gallery of South Australia.

23

LIST OF WORKS

25

29

Booth, 2010 – 11.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, fixings, timber, leather, buckles, vinyl, plaster, approx 180 x 100 x 50cm. Photography by Mick Bradley

30

Sleeve, 2010.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, fixings, timber, vinyl, plaster, approx 90 x 100 x 50cm. Photography by Andrew Noble

31

Legs eleven, 2010.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, fixings, thread, timber, vinyl, plaster, chair, belt, approx 90 x 100 x 60cm. Photography by Andrew Noble

32

Quad, 2011.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, fixings, plaster, timber, lamp, approx 120 x 100 x 50cm. Photography by Andrew Noble

33

Marrow, 2014.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, thread, timber, fixings, approx 150 x 110 x 60cm. Photography by James Field

34

Stop, 2012.

Boiled wool, thread, timber, 120 x 100 x 30cm. Photography

by James Field

35

Twitch, 2012.

Boiled wool, thread, timber, press studs, fabric, 130 x 50 x 30cm. Photography by James Field

36

Milk tree, 2012.

Leather, latex, press studs, plaster, steel, timber, MDF, cardboard, fixings, 180 x 150 x 50cm. Photography by James Field.

37

He has an imp, (detail) 2013.

Fabric, thread, flywire, timber (lime wood, European Walnut), ceramic, resin, dimensions variable. Photography by James Field

38

Broom coven and auspicious broom, 2014.

Linen, cheesecloth, thread, feathers, dirt, European birch, linseed oil, foam padding, MDF, installation comprising 8 panels: 270 x 360 x approx 25cm. Photography by James Field

39

Day broom and night broom, 2013.

Fabric, fringing, foam padding, thread, timber, fixings, dimensions variable. Photography by James Field

40

Bury it, 2011.

Fabric, thread, bedhead, plaster, foam, fibreglass, timber, fixings, 95 x 100 x 100cm. Photo by James Field

41

Untitled, 2011.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, thread, chair, 100 x 60 x 60cm.

Photography by James Field

42

Death admires you, 2012.

Lime wood, beeswax, clock, approx 35 x 30 x 20cm.

Photography by James Field

43

Rutting creature 1, 2015.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, thread, wire, foam padding, timber, buttons, plaster, fixings, approx 200 x 90 x 60cm.

Photography by James Field

44

Rutting creature 2, 2014 – 15.

Flywire, fibreglass, fabric, thread, buttons, timber, chrome bells, ribbon, plaster, foam padding, approx 190 x 150 x 110cm. Photography by James Field

45

Garland, 2015.

Found gourd, fabric, thread, pins, foam, wire, ribbon, copper plated bells, rope, brass hooks, approx 200 x 200x 100cm.

Photography by James Field All images courtesy of the artist, GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide and the respective acknowledged photographers.

27

29

31

33

35

37

39

41

43

45

BIOGRAPHY Julia Robinson Education 1999 - 2002 Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours), Adelaide Central School of

Art, South Australia

Solo Exhibitions 2015

2013

2012 2011

2009 2008 2004

One to rot and one to grow, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Pinch wood, Fontanelle Gallery Some to the stone, Anna Pappas Gallery Some to the stone, Latrobe Regional Gallery Damn your eyes, Greenaway Art Gallery Slumber or perish, Anna Pappas Gallery The Sound of the Beast, Anna Pappas Gallery Here’s to my sweet Satan, Über Gallery eat, wolf, the Project Space, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

Selected Group Exhibitions 2014

2013 2012

2011

do it (Adelaide), Samstag Museum of Art Dark Heart, 2014 Adelaide Biennial, Art Gallery of South Australia Melbourne Art Fair, Greenaway Art Gallery at Royal Exhibition Building Inner workings, Greenaway Art Gallery Be Consumed: Creative collaborations from the Barossa, The Jam Factory Neck of the woods, Adelaide Central Gallery Deep Space, Art Gallery of South Australia New work, Greenaway Art Gallery CACSA @ 70: Member’s Exhibition, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Imagining Interiors, The Jam Factory Third Impact, Light Square Gallery

47

2010

2009

2007 2006

2005

2004

The NEW NEW, The Gallerie Flyblown, Feltspace Nameless Cylinder, Dianne Tanzer Gallery Between us, Adelaide Central Gallery Nameless Cylinder, Seedling Art Space Infernal Cake, Ăœber Gallery Things will be great, MOP Gallery Sensible Shoes, Adelaide Central Gallery Petrified Nature, Downtown Art Space Superstructure, West Space Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art Thousand-fold, 151 Hindley Street

Selected Professional Experience 2004 - Current

Lecturer, Adelaide Central School of Art 2013 Artist in Residence, Seymour College 2008 Artist in Residence, Wilderness School 2005 Design Associate, The Green Sheep, Windmill Performing Arts

Selected Awards and Grants 2014

2013

2011

2008

2007

2004

ArtsSA Independent Makers and Presenters, Project Development Grant ArtsSA Independent Makers and Presenters, Last Minute Presentation Grant Australia Council Grant, New Work ArtsSA Independent Makers and Presenters, Project Development Grant ArtsSA, Independent Makers and Presenters, Project Development Grant ArtsSA, Independent Makers and Presenters, Project Development Grant SAYAB Project and Development Grant SAYAB Project and Development Grant

Selected Bibliography 2014

2013

2011

Curating the curative: talismanic tendencies in contemporary art, Lisa Slade, Das Superpaper, March 2014 Jump cuts, John Neylon, The Adelaide Review, Issue 415 Conjuring up a dark heart for modern art, Brett Williamson, 891 ABC Adelaide Bodies cast in a state of sexual ambiguity, Robert Nelson, The Age, March 13th Playing the Fontanelle, Wendy Walker, Art Monthly, No. 265 Sympathy for the Devil, Jennifer Kalionis, Artlink, Volume 31, No 4

2010

2009 2008

2007 2006 2005

2004

Death Becomes Her, Sinead Stubbins, Melbourne Weekly, August 31st Oh my Goth, John Neylon, The Adelaide Review, Issue 376 CACSA Contemporary 2010: The NEW NEW, Lisa Harms, Artlink, Volume 30, No 4 Satan and Friends, Inga Walton, Textile, Issue 1, No. 93 No ifs or butts, Ross Moore, Sightlines Galleries, The Age, October 3rd Two Adventures in Three Dimensions, Megan Backhouse, Art Guide Australia, September/October Dante’s just dessert, Inga Walton, Profile, Fibrearts, September/ October The Infernal Cake, Inga Walton, Craft Culture, March 24th Maptacular, Stephanie Radok, The Adelaide Review, Issue 290 Petrified Nature, Sera Waters, Artlink, Volume 25, No. 1 Primavera 2004, Alex Gawronski, Broadsheet, Volume 33, No. 4 eat, wolf, Sarah Quantrill, dB Magazine, Issue 339 Petrified Nature, Sera Waters, dB Magazine, Issue 344

Collections Art Gallery of South Australia.

Private collections both international and national.

49

Acknowledgements: With heartfelt thanks: Roy Ananda, Lisa Slade, Logan MacDonald, Sarita Chadwick and CACSA, Glenn Kestell, Rick Clise, Jess Mara, Debbie Prior, Chris Thiel, Sera Waters, Nic Folland, Kay Robinson, Kate Morkunas and Joe Maniscalco, James Field, Tristan Adcock, Switchboard Studio, Adelaide Central School of Art, Eastern Silk, Ferrier Fabrics, A Class Metal Finishers.

Julia Robinson is represented by GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide.

One to rot and one to grow - a presentation of new work at the Contemporary Art Centre of SA has recieved support from Arts SA’s Independent Makers and Presenters funding program.

ONE TO ROT AND ONE TO GROW | JULIA ROBINSON Exhibition dates 5 June - 5 July 2015 Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia 14 Porter Street, Parkside SOUTH AUSTRALIA 5063

THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA IS A MEMBER OF CAOS (CONTEMPORARY ART ORGANISATIONS AUSTRALIA) W www.caos.org.au THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA IS ASSISTED BY THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THROUGH ARTS SA AND IS ASSISTED BY THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, ITS ARTS FUNDING AND ADVISORY BODY THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA IS SUPPORTED BY THE VISUAL ARTS AND CRAFT STRATEGY, AN INITIATIVE OF THE AUSTRALIAN, STATE AND TERRITORY GOVERNMENTS