new works by James Robinson
James Robinson
25 May to 2 July 2016
Preview: Sunday 22 May 4pm
James Robinson returns with powerful new paintings, some 12 years in the making, in his distinctive manner, creating order of the chaos of the world. His work challenges the viewer to confront issues of social conscience, political apathy, global sustainability, but with an uplift of hope - above all, to hold true to the soul. See his artist's statement below...
Artist’s Statement – Undertow
My feeling is it refers to the psycho-emotional boundary dissolution of working in an expressionist way … in an existential, imaginative territory.
As a receptor of the world I filter information … I process energy currents of the whole, specifically of our epoch (its temporary by design) … its systemic abuses.
Shadow work (Non theatre) … and internal processing is not common in art now … but i can only relay what I actually perceive to be going on.
And i admit i am blind (philosophically) … limited and quite incapable of envisioning a true totality of cosmic and Gaian significance … but i know it’s there.
What motivates me as a painter is THE WORK – the Making!
Transduction of innate energy unconsciousness … ancestral self;
to make seen the unseen – this process is discomforting for me as it
rightly is profound.
I feel morally accountable in some way for the iniquities of our generation …
the apathy and helplessness, as we plunder and degrade our biosphere,
our cultures, and the enslavement of all people under a criminal globalism, a debt system of exploitation controlled by a war economy.
Therefore my work is personal, and social; the expression of a
legitimate anxiety.
And New Zealand used to have a moral backbone (or is this just another myth I absorbed growing up here?). Perhaps the embryonic future will read our vain
scribblings in the sand of luxury’s dust and ponder our ineptitude to effect any
change..
I can only work on my self, out loud … desperately …
so be it.
it’s my job to share it … because art must remind us, we have a Soul.
James Robinson
Port Chalmers
May 2016