Art Reviews
Agora Gallery, New York
Art Review- Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York The works of Donna Robinson form aesthetically beautiful and utterly intriguing vistas from objects many would consider at best worthless, at worst environmentally toxic. She takes inspiration for these works from the beach where she lives, where the tides bring in the washed up debris of human civilization. The mystery of these fragments with unknown pasts attracts Robinson – her initial photographs are layered, transformed, and juxtaposed, the layering used much like paint. The beach, the ultimate boundary between land and sea, above and below, is recreated in these objects. Enlarged, cropped, they become the giant features in an imagined landscape, skies skittering above whilst ravines form. The definition and luminosity of the skyscapes Robinson uses to construct her scenes contrasts directly with the abstraction of the flotsam. Whilst the skies are open and unambiguous, the bright, highly patterned landscapes formed from the world’s detritus become beautiful through being obscured.
Reverse Polarity
eARTH emag review by Danielle Harvey
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Robinson's use of layered textures in her work draw the viewer in. Reverse Polarity creates a sense of isolation and "Otherworldliness", as if the scene could not possibly be from this earth. The feeling of isolation creates a mystical atmosphere as if the images are conjured from a bizarre dream.
Art Review- RealTime Australia’s critical guide to international contemporary art
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RealTime issue #132 April-May 2016 pg.
Donna Maree Robinson’s Pathogenicity is also a lustrous creation, despite its imagery being drawn from water samples collected for the Mackay Council Water and Waste Laboratory. The video displays concentric, boldly coloured disc shapes twisting within each other. Inside each circle is a kind of lava-lamp movement—unctuous, gleaming, rolling. Exploring the microbiological colour change processes used by scientists to measure water bacteria, Robinson takes us through a portal to reflect on the invisible aspects of a finite resource that flows within all things. Synthesised sounds and the rubbing of a finger around a wine glass reinforce the work’s cyclical motif, evoking water’s essence. The hypnotic fluidity of the movement of the disks inclines the viewer to slowly tilt their head from side to side in another mesmeric and contemplative creation.
Pathogenicity still, Emergence Exhibition
