Spacial Drawings

Like Karen Schifano and Brent Hallard, Australian non-objective artist Margaret Roberts makes great use of tape in her installation work. Roberts is currently a lecturer in drawing at the National Art School in Sydney, and calls her installation works ‘spacial drawings’. Apart from tape, Roberts also uses acrylic and string in an attempt to interact with the environments she installs her work, in a highly restrained and minimal fashion.

While her work may look a little bit random, it is often based on precise measurements of existing structures that are in the same space. For example, with Artefact at Cockatoo Island, Roberts measured the space of 6 permanent mounted walls for works to be hung on, and represented that space in a different form: a piece of red wool that travels along the ground, and up and down from the ceiling. Her choice of red wool in the installation is striking in that it fades almost completely into the background. Of this work, Roberts says:

It is also a free standing sculpture outlined in yarn and supported by the floor and roof. It has a chameleon-like identity with the buildings, because, despite its scale, it is nearly invisible.

  1. up_today_arch
    26.10.10 12:16

    Nice works… I like yellow lones on white background…

  2. Michelle
    26.10.10 12:47

    A perfect example of how making things appear simple can require a lot of work and planning

  3. eili
    26.10.10 21:34

    reminds me of banksy´s lines to follow in london..

  4. Bagia
    01.11.10 18:16

    reminds me the Swiss artist Felice Varini
    http://www.varini.org/

  5. Adrian
    02.11.10 04:54

    The first image, maybe, as it deals with depth in the same way, but otherwise her work is very different.

  6. Robin Lundgren
    05.11.10 11:46

    Now this is just RAD. (yeay for 80′s teen words of awesome?)

  7. Robin Lundgren
    05.11.10 11:57

    Something I forgot to mention or compare in my last comment is the work of Brent Hallard which I found to be quite offensive in some aspects.
    The work of Brent Hallard under the title “Skeleton” gives nothing, it’s just tape in abstract shapes accomplishing nothing more than thrown away bits of tape. It’s just tape creating nothing of value (remember, I’m only speaking for me, my experience)
    This work by Margaret Roberts is totally different. It accomplishes illusions and beauty in the form of math. Really well planed art, not abstract placement of geometric shapes.

  8. Kay Bellafonte
    25.12.10 18:31

    Varini’s work deals with depth in an organic way. Robert’s lines invasive and infect the landscape of the walls she uses. Like a virus, it is mathematical and magically precise.

  9. Adrian
    10.01.11 14:13

    Thanks for the comment, Kay. That’s a terrific way of putting it. Spot on.