Jenny Robinson

5. Jenny Robinson, Fractured, 2017-2018, 9 photopolymer plates made directly from a site specific drawing, printed on Gampi japanes paper, seamed and backed with sekishu, 175 x 122.5 cm. $15 000.

Robinson’s work is concerned with her first-hand experience of the peculiar transience of our man-made environment. She is specifically preoccupied with the conceptualisation of ideas related to fragility and strength, and in exploring the juxtapositions between the impermanence of the ostensibly permanent elements around us. Her work often depicts the entire timeline of a structure in one image, and by extension, that of the people who built it, used it and will dismantle it – our past, present and potential.

Robinson’s practice emerges from the observation and study of the architectural fossils of the places she has lived. Through firsthand observation, she creates human-sized, two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional spaces that frame, and inform, the contemporary urban experience.

Increasingly inventive in her methods and her consideration of materials, her large-scale dry points are printed on lightweight Japanese paper, a material choice that points out the ironic contrast between the inevitable destruction of the welded metal building and the museum-conserved future of its likeness, pressed into semi-transparent tissue. These images are a carefully-constructed , personal record of a temporary place at a fleeting moment in time – an artist’s multi-layered lightfast impression of impermanence.

Originally from London, Jenny Robinson studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking in the United Kingdom. After living in San Francisco for 20-years, she moved to Slovenia before recently relocating to Australia as the founder of the Jenny Robinson Print Studio (JRPS) in Sydney’s Inner West. Robinson has exhibited widely internationally, and is a passionate exponent of printmaking and works on paper. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious Mario Avati Gravure Laureate Award from the Academic des Beaux Arts in Paris, France, where she had a retrospective solo exhibition in September 2021. She has won numerous awards, including a Fellowship at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia, Italy; The Vermont Studio Center Printmaking Fellowship; was the Summer visiting Artist at NSCAD, Canada and Alfred University, NY, amongst others.

Robinson’s works are in many private and public collections, including the Library of Congress Arts Collection, Washington DC, The Achenbach Fine Print Collection, San Francisco, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, MA, The Art Council of Great Britain, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, as select examples.