Peter Robinson
Polymer Monoliths

Mundane and everyday, polystyrene is also a material of consumerist excess. A non-biodegradable thermo-plastic substance, polystyrene cushions our electronic goods in transit and pollutes our foreshores. As evidenced over recent years in the work of Peter Robinson, it is also a sculptural material of infinite possibility - lightweight, negligible in mass yet physically substantial, able to pack out large spaces or articulate delicate forms, shaped in detail with sharp white lines. Robinson pursues multiple formal trajectories in his use of polystyrene, as if with its associations of disposability the possibility exists for any number of sculptural experiments to be tested, cast aside, reworked, reconsidered. His work ranges from roughly hewn, almost lumpen forms, to intricately carved, baroque, almost liquid objects, to massive installations of over-sized polystyrene chainlink taking over whole interiors. 

Peter Robinson is an Auckland-based artist who has exhibited extensively internationally including at the 2001 Venice Biennale, 1998 Biennale of Sydney, 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, 1996 Asia-Pacific Triennial and 1996 Bienal de São Paulo. He was recently awarded the 2008 Walters Prize and two books on his work are soon to be published, one based on his ACK project to be published by ARTSPACE, Auckland and Clouds publishing and the other by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth documenting Robinson's major solo exhibition Snow Ball Blind Time (2008).