Assembled Lines

Using equipment salvaged from Geelong’s Ford Factory, artist Robbie Rowlands defines the point at which the functionality of an object is challenged and its history comes into focus. Cabinets with cut corners are still capable of standing. Sliced toolboxes allow visual access even when the lid is fixed shut. A severed locker reveals inside a remnant, vintage workshop ghetto-blaster. Sections of wardrobe veneer, marked by cut lines, are positioned inside a pair of multi-draw toolboxes. Robbie Rowlands’ sculptural interventions unite the domestic (the home) with the workspace (the factory), acknowledging both environments in the context of a worker’s life. 

Exhibition dates: OCT 19 to NOV 30 2024

Opening event: Saturday, 19 OCT @4PM
Platform Arts | 60 Little Malop St, Djillong/Geelong.

platformarts.org.au @platformartsgeelong

WHEN I LOOK AT YOU I SEE DISTANCE X AXIS

I’m excited to announce a short run exhibition (3days) in collaboration with Natasha Johns-Messenger’s series of spatial wonders, ‘Axis’

25 - 27 August, 2023

Fri 3:00pm - 6:00pm
Sat 3:00pm - 5:00pm*
Sun 2:00pm - 5:00pm

*Opening Saturday 26 August, 3-5pm

Strange Engine Residency
217 Dundas Street
Preston, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

VENEER - Alpha 60 Chapter House

Opening Wed 9th Nov 6pm - RSVP HERE

9 Nov - 9 Dec 2022

CHAPTER HOUSE

L2/195 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

Presented by Blackartprojects, Alpha 60, Chapter House & Kiosk

Finding the edge - Website

Created in the midst of a world-wide pandemic this site responsive work explores the last remaining moments of a decommissioned timber yard.

Website release featuring

Conversation - James Hewison in conversation with Robbie Rowlands

Essay - Weekend at Bernie’s: Sculpture and the Dissolution of Site by David Cross

90x45

Site responsive exhibition

Bernie Cook Timber

NOVEMBER 7-10th

Situated in a retired timber yard, slated for demolition, 90x45 is a new site-responsive exhibition by artist Robbie Rowlands.

With the relocation of Bernie Cook Timber, making way for the new Sky Rail development, this exhibition finds a unique approach to celebrate 70 years of timber history at this site.

Working with 90x45 structural pine and an array of retired saw blades, this exhibition will feature sculptural and sound works installed throughout this expansive mid-century warehouse.

Elegant sculptural forms foreground Rowlands familiar precision cuts, all set within a sonic field of fundamental notes and overtones. The creative response here is multilayered, where history becomes malleable and wondrous. Time, even with its restrictions, has a greater freedom in this brief moment. 

Due to covid regualtions bookings are essential. Go to www.90x45.com

It has been an incredible year. From Ballarat to Broken Hill, I'm grateful for the opportunity to work on projects that have been deeply immersed in the landscape, creating not just within, but for these environments and their communities. It is difficult to understand how, politically, there is such little respect for the arts, particularly when directly experiencing the impact of its presence, importance and engagement in the landscape. 

Thank you to everyone for your support of my practice, whether physically or digitally, it is greatly appreciated. I'll end the year with just one more quiet gesture; a work created with my son Yianni on a site that is always on my mind, the outskirts of Broken Hill - Barkandji Wilyakali land. It was created using remnant sections of fire hose. Like a stalactite, the cut sections are suspended in the space, hovering just above the red dust that is so symbolic of this region.

Whilst out photographing early one evening a visitor dropped by. A Wilcannia man, he asked if I had experienced spirits in these sites. I couldn't confirm the presence of anything especially tangible, but there was certainly something evident in the subtleties and quietness; light and sounds that lift and fall and tease you to pay attention.

In the background though (and if there are spirits, they are screaming for attention), the Barka (river) is in trouble as water is scarce. In the distance fires are burning with a heat that is unimaginable. The connection is palpable. Our friends, families and fireys are on the front line.


Stay safe out there

Fire Hose, Nine Mile, Barkandji Wilyakali land, 2019

Thank you

SUBSURFACE
Commission research exhibition

20 October - 8 December, 2019

Opening Wednesday 20th November 6:30 - 8:30pm

Please RSVP by Friday 15 November 2019 to gallery@hume.vic.gov.au

Celebrating the completion of Robbie Rowlands’ major sculptural commission Crossing the Floor, the inaugural Town Hall Broadmeadows Gallery exhibition Subsurface draws on works developed over a two year research period. 

 Rowlands’ work captures the history of the original townhall, paying specific attention to the floor as a surface that has supported the community over time. Encompassing photo documentation, film and sound - including the old supper room sound system – the exhibition brings together the rich, layered histories that inspired the final sculptural work, now permanently on display in the main foyer. 

 The exhibition also features a series of photographic works that capture the original townhall by renowned photographer John Gollings and a documentary by Singing Bowl Media.

Townhall Broadmeadows Gallery
10 Dimboola Road, Broadmeadows, Victoria 3047

INCREMENTAL LOSS
Photographic Series

ROBBIE ROWLANDS

Download catalogue here

24 August - 20 October, 2019

National Centre For Photography
4 Lydiard Street South
Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

Robbie Rowlands works on the cusp of destabilisation, at once unsettling audiences by challenging their perceived relationship with their surroundings, while inciting their continued exploration. Commissioned by the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Rowlands undertook a three-month residency from January to March 2019 in the Former Union Bank, which now stands proudly as the National Centre For Photography.

Incremental Loss was the centre’s inaugural exhibition and the artist’s largest to date. The artist’s sculptural interventions into walls, ceiling, furniture and carpet enter the space with elegance and poise, indicating a moment of transition. Increment by increment the former Union Bank and its original purpose were lost to time but, for a moment, we were given an extraordinary insight into the past as we moved through the present and prepared for the future. For BIFB 2019, Rowlands will present a selection of photographic works developed through the residency, furthering photography’s relationship with sculpture.

Incremental Loss

Please join us in celebrating our inaugural exhibition Incremental Loss by artist Robbie Rowlands. Rowlands manipulates the built environment into immersive sculptural site interventions that call to question our understanding of stability and vulnerability. This new work positions Rowlands’ (delete here) artistic practice within the transition of an historic site. Originally a 19th Century Union Bank, Incremental Loss blurs the boundaries between past, present and future.

Following the exhibition the site will be closed for renovation to become the new home of the National Centre for Photography. Rowlands will develop a photographic series of this work to be showcased at the Ballarat Intenational Foto Biennale in August 2019.

Opening Saturday 23 February 4pm

Exhibition dates & times:
Saturday 23rd February - Sunday 10th March
Wednesday — Sunday 10am – 4pm

National Centre For Photography
Mitchell Family Gallery
4 Lydiard Street South, Ballarat

Facebook INVITE

@ballaratfoto

www.ballaratfoto.org

Nearness

Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery

Residency Exhibition

2nd - 4th November 2018

‘Nearness’ is an exhibition that celebrates the rich body of site-specific artistic explorations by Robbie Rowlands as part of the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery residency program. Whilst exploring Broken Hill and the surrounding landscape, Rowlands was drawn to moments that captured unique perspectives of his experience. Rather than being drawn to the infinitely vast landscape, Rowlands turned his gaze to specific sites and materials that, in their solitude, offered distinctive qualities that he felt framed his experience.

Nearness will be on show for three days at the incredible Machinery Preservation Society. The exhibition will feature projection, sculpture and sound.

OFFICIAL OPENING AND NIGHT EVENT
Friday 2nd November 2018, 6pm

$10 per head for BBQ dinner (vegetarian and vegan options)
RSVP along with your dietary requirements by 20th October.

EXHIBITION
Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th November, 11am - 4pm

Machinery Preservation Society
479 Crystal Street, Broken Hill  

Image - Tail - Manipulated discarded newspapers and magazines pile, 2018

Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award

Unsettled, cut suitcase, 2018

On show as part of this years small sculpture award.

Exhibition dates: 5 September to 19 October 2018
Please visit deakin.edu.au/art-collection/ for more details.

With what remains - NotFair 2017

Sculptural site intervention

Nutalex oil factory

11-19th Nov
Opening 11th November 2pm

Set in the decommissioned Nutalex engineering workshop, a 1950s crumbling brick house set at the side of the factory, With what remains is a new sculptural site intervention created for Notfair 2017. Utilising remnant materials; pipes, oil and the physical structure of the site, this work is raw and visceral, representing mechanisms that support, house and in this case, produce the substances we consume.

12 James St, Windsor Vic 3181
Notfair facebook

Exhibition hours

Saturday 11/11 3-8pm
Sunday 12/11  12-5pm
Wednesday 15/11 3-7pm
Thursday 16/11 3-7pm
Friday 17/11 4-7pm
Saturday 18/11 12-6pm
Sunday 19/11 12-4pm

Light Falls

Light falls features a 20m light pole reformed to fall gracefully across The Strand walkway in Townsville. Precision cuts fragment the pole, disrupting its structural integrity and redefining its form.

In a landscape that has experienced the force of nature wreak havoc on the strongest of structures, the outcome here - with its gentle curves - attempts to find a balance, revealing an underlying stability.

Commissioned for Strand Ephemera 2017, Light Falls will be on Exhibition 28th July to 6th August.

BLACKARTPROJECTS

STRANDEPHEMERA

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Crossing the floor (this hall breathes)

Opening Thursday 1 June 6 - 8:30pm
Exhibition 2 - 3 June, 11am - 4pm (2 days only!)
Artist talk Saturday 3 June 2pm

Broadmeadows Town Hall
1079 Pascoe Vale Road


Crossing the Floor (this hall breathes) is an installation that reveals the rich artistic investigations that have informed Robbie Rowland's newly commissioned sculpture for the Broadmeadows Town Hall redevelopment project. Rowlands’ site-specific practice engages directly with the structure and fabric of the hall, revealing qualities that sit on the periphery of our awareness, often unseen. 

This exhibition will be situated in the Supper Room space of the Broadmeadows Town Hall, soon to be closed for renovation as part of hall’s $23 million redevelopment. In addition to site-specific video and sound works developed through the research period, it will feature a delicately cut section of the supper room floor that reveals the preserved subsurface of the Hall’s fifty-year history. 

This project is delivered by Hume City Council, in partnership with Kerstin Thompson Architects and RMIT Centre for Art, Society and Transformation (CAST).

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Scent Lingers

Melbourne Fringe Festival - Fringe Furniture - Abbotsford Convent

Robbie Rowlands’ newly commissioned exhibition Scent Lingers brings together a selection of his recent work and an accompanying site-specific sound piece for Fringe Furniture 2016. Rowlands’s work artfully encapsulates the idea of redesign, bringing together familiar forms and breaking them down, challenging the way in which we see the world and design. Scent Lingers is a series of works that stand together and in contrast to works in Fringe Furniture; works that are beginning a new life contrasted with objects reaching the end of theirs. For Rowlands the process of decline and decay becomes an aesthetic event.

Melbourne Fringe Festival
Fringe furniture - Abbotsford Convent
Sacred Heart Laundry Rooms

15 September - 2 October, 2016
Opening - Wednesday 14th @ 6PM

Festival hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 11am-5pm
***Scent Lingers can be viewed all week from 11am -11pm***

1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford, Melbourne, Australia

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Between two homes

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Sighting - house intervention project

James Carey & Robbie Rowlands

Opening Drinks -Thursday 26 May, 6-8pm
Viewing: 1-4pm, Friday 27 - Sunday 29 May, 2016

365-367 Bell Street
Bellfield, Melbourne, Australia (Between Preston & Heidelberg)
*Parking on Wilkinson Crescent and Skeffington Street

Sighting is an intervention project by artists Robbie Rowlands and James Carey. Surveying the physical history of two soon to be demolished 1960s houses as source material to create artwork, Rowlands and Carey manipulate, reconfigure and remove interior surfaces and found materials to transform our universal understanding of domestic spaces.

Commissioned by surgery directors Heathcote Wright and Nima Pakrou as part of the MCES development in Darebin, this exhibition aims to connect the history of the site, its future potential and the broader community.

Presented by Blackartprojects & Melbourne Comprehensive Eye Surgeons

Contact:
David Hagger - Blackartprojects
Mob: 0421 990 481 Email: dh@blackartprojects.com

www.blackartprojects.com.au
www.robbierowlands.com.au
www.jamescarey.com.au

Images:   Shadows fall - Bedroom cut, abandoned house - Robbie Rowlands, 2016 Photo Robbie Rowlands
                 

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Cutting Corners - Dolls House Gallery

Exhibited in two window fronts, Robbie Rowlands’ Cutting Corners brings in to question our understanding of the ordinary. Through his distinctive cuts and manipulations of commonplace objects, Rowlands balances both the destruction of a subject and the potential for its re-imagining in order to shift our reading of the structural conventions that make up our surrounds.

26th April – 16th May 2016
Opening Friday 6th May 6-8 pm @ The Dolls House Gallery

Exhibition venues and times
The Dolls House Gallery
108 Miller St. Preston West, Australia (Day/Night till 12pm)
Window front (around corner)
30-36 Gilbert Rd, Preston West, Australia (Nightly 6-11pm)

Image: Falling by the side, Queen Anne bedside table, installation view, Dolls House Gallery, Melbourne

Special thanks to:
Rebecca Mayo @ The Dolls House Gallery & Fr Samuel @ St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church

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Tread lightly for this ground MAY BE hollow - Long Division Gallery

Long Division Gallery Presents
Robbie Rowlands
Tread lightly for this ground may be hollow

Detroit Residency Exhibition

5th - 26th March 2015

This new exhibition draws from Rowlands recent Australia Council residency at Popps Packing artist studios in Detroit USA. Through photography and film this body of work celebrates moments in which Rowlands finds a balance between the visible distress Detroit has experienced and the optimism that was so evident in the community he was surrounded by.

Opening Night March 5th 6 - 8pm

Featuring Oliver Mann (Live)
+ Support from Lisa Salvo

Oliver Mann is something of an anomaly in the music world. Working across various musical strands and languages, the Melbourne bass‑baritone's output is defined by its adherence to the classical canon as much as its re-imagining. While steadily building a reputation and career within an operatic context - including various roles with Opera Australia and the Victorian Opera - it's the coalescence between Mann's classical work and wider musical expressions that make his oeuvre so intriguing.

Long Division Gallery
Schoolhouse Studios Inc.

81 Rupert Street
Collingwood
3066

PO Box 1453
Collingwood, VIC, 3066
schoolhousestudios@gmail.com
www.schoolhousestudios.com.au

Alice Glenn            Hazel Brown
0400 579 006         0425773214

Special thanks to Popps Packing artist studios Hamtramck/Detroit
http://www.poppspacking.org

http://olivermann.com
www.robbierowlands.com.au

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