Telling Tales (Tails)
The Outbye Gallery
Pittenweem
2011
Jennifer Robson's first solo show entitled 'Telling Tales (Tails). Written here is the forward for the show, by gallery curator Lesley Kamel.
'The elements that inform Jennifer Robson’s ‘self-made mythology’ provide a thread which runs through her entire practice. References to childhood memories, toys and books; female empowerment; horses; hair, and braided hair, and the colour blue, recur throughout the work. Robson works in a large variety of mediums which include painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, embroidery, installation and jewellery – at any one time her studio is filled with a vast amount of works-in-progress, which, rather than suggesting a form of chaos, reflect an abundance of creativity and intense joy in the process.
Horses have been an obsession since childhood, and here provide an expressive, but less guarded channel, through which Robson can reveal her more emotive traits, contrasting with the meticulously executed and polished self portraits of previous years. Horses feature in Robson’s paintings, graphite drawings, collages, and in the ‘Storyboxes’ – these sculptural works are contained within upturned drawers and other recycled pieces of furniture, providing a platform for the arrangement of figurines and found objects, and an abundance of sparkles. A drawer becomes many things – a palace, a boudoir, a secret hideaway for witches. As their title suggests, they tell a very personal story, but also invite the viewer’s interpretation, and a dialogue with the artist. The blue braid also features in much of Robson’s work, in the sensitive blue pencil drawings of horses manes and human hair. The braid represents the artist’s ongoing process of gathering and weaving together of myths, tales, childhood memories and playful references that informs the work and that Robson clearly finds both inspiring and immensely enjoyable.'