ARTIST PROFILE: Oxmarket Contemporary
Intimate Immensity #5 (2024) oil and acrylic on canvas, 206 x 150 cm
Artist Profile For My Exhibition
Exhibition dates: Tue, 28 March 2026 - Sun, 10 May 2026
PV: Tue, 28 March 2026, 6-8 pm
Exhibition Title: Expedition
Exhibitors Name: Robyn Jacobs
1. About you
(please tell us about your background, your training, how/why you became an artist, highlights of your career, how your personal story relates to the art you produce)
I was born in New Zealand and moved to the UK in 1990. I live and work in Hampshire and London. Completing a BA at UCA (Farnham) in 2013 was integral to establishing myself as an artist. It gave me the platform to begin to build a body of work, to experiment in a conceptual manner and to develop an art practice that seeks to learn through making. In 2022, I furthered my education by completing an MA, also at UCA (Farnham).
My training was central to developing an interest in site-responsive works. I have shown nationally and internationally with recent local exhibitions at the Petersfield Museum (formerly Petersfield Police Station), Farnham Heath RSPB Reserve, the STABLE Gallery, West Meon and with Wells Art Contemporary at Wells Cathedral. It is apparent that my focus on place recurs repeatedly in my practice. Part of my motivation is to create meaning in the context of my adopted home whilst acknowledging the distance of time and location of the country I left behind.
2. What are the most important characteristics of your art?
(please tell us here about the subject, medium, techniques and any significant influences on your work)
I have a multi-disciplined practice in mediums such as drawing, painting, film and 3D. My work concerns itself with physical and psychological interpretation of place and engages with materiality and process within the context of site and/or activity.
Examining such concepts as trace and presence, my practice looks to engage with themes which have the potential to build knowledge and understanding. Accumulation and rhythm, layering and building are some of the techniques used in order for the work to take form. My New Zealand background and local history inform my ideas and are embedded in the outcomes I achieve.
Artists such as Eva Hesse, Sarah Sze and Cy Twombly continue to be significant influences present throughout the practice. Theoretical texts, key to recent and ongoing development examine Giles Deleuze’s notion of ‘difference and repetition’, Guston Bachelard’s ‘Poetics of Space’ and Tim Ingold’s ‘Being Alive’.
3. What is the main thing you want your art to communicate?
(having seen your work, what would you like people to take away from the experience - the message(s), the feeling(s))
I would like my work to generate curiosity and intrigue in the viewer while remaining rigorous to process and material. It is my aim to continue to explore methods in my practice that ask questions and experiment through gathering knowledge in the process of making. The investigative nature of the work explores the space between the familiar and the unfamiliar. This is an ongoing concern and challenge but one I continue to pursue and would like my art to communicate.
4. What makes your process and approach different?
(please tell us here about what we should highlight to visitors and prospective purchasers. What in particular should they be looking for?)
Although the work seeks to remain attached to the process and material of the subject matter, there is scope for singular interpretations factored in by the presence and decisions of the maker. When using repeated methods and material, variations, however subtle are inevitable and allow for intrinsic differences. Due to the physicality of the hand, I inhabit the work and develop a unique dialogue with the rules and boundaries appropriate to the object, the place or the ceremonial activity.
Images of work (detail) I will be submitting for my exhibition.