About the Artist
Robyn Webster (Christchurch) is primarily a sculptor and printmaker, although she has worked since her first exhibition, in other disciplines including painting and performance. Formerly a teacher of painting at secondary level, she now focuses on her own art practice. She brings the tradition of handmade artefacts and natural materials into contemporary fine art, most notably with her use of industrialised Harakeke (flax) fibre both in the creation of her unique sculptures and for her semi-abstracted monoprints.
Her sculptures have now evolved into extraordinary bronzes, cast from the harekeke (flax) woven sculptures, still employing motifs about human connection with the land.
Her monotypes also employ other natural materials for imprinting shapes – such as the giant puka leaf. Suggestions of cell structures, protective woman figures, house shapes and perhaps bloodlines, flow through her work. The concept of womanhood underpins it – from being a woman, making art as a woman, to concepts of woman as home, world as home, and of protecting the natural world.
Recent Works
The figure is a recurring motif, and her river works focus on the relationship with the natural environment and commitment to its protection. She entwines the concepts and expression by using natural locally sourced materials like harakeke (flax) fibre and leaf forms to imprint vessel forms and figures. Those natural materials suggest looking to indigenous tradition for a more natural connection to the environment.
Recent works also emphasise the idea of pausing, taking breath, absorbing what is around us, stepping into a new phase.
