RICHARD ROBBINS (1927-2010)

00639

Aluminium, solid cast, waxed and painted on hand-cut black Welsh slates

21.50 cm wide   70.00 cm high

8.46 inches wide  27.56 inches high

The artist

"Visits to the Lyceum Ballroom (off the Aldwych in London) and occasionally the Palais de Dance, Hammersmith were for enjoyment. As I became more involved in expressing my thoughts and feelings about ‘Dance’, however, a professional curiosity crept in. There I would watch and nervously sketch- always sensing that people did not like to be stared at. Why should they?

Particular figures in the sculpture, started some twenty years ago, come from memories held deep in my understanding which have been released by the making. By this I mean, among other things, that I did not have models in front of me for the figures; indeed I did not even do direct drawings for them. Of course, over the years, I had been exercising my imagination on the theme and earlier works contained, I hoped, the quintessence of the emotional intensities which are the ingredients of dance.

Dancing, or not dancing in the presence of others who are, does not evoke a single emotion; hope, engagement, enrapture, community, disappointment and isolation are but a few that intermingle. These are elements in all our lives and Dance Halls blend them as few other places do. The Dance Hall can be an intensely lonely place, in the same way as it can be breath-takingly joyful, romantic and physical.

I have gathered my memories, experienced or observed, from identifiable incidents and places. I experience that strange need not only to live the episodes, but to release them through the medium of art. In the event, work using figures does not always find expression directly, but in a kind of ‘motif’ abstract. I see life drawing, which I have done much, as an exercise towards understanding the human figure for other purposes. It is not just a preparation, but an activity that demands its own critical completion. My period at Camberwell teaching Anatomical Drawing was hugely instructive. Through it I began to see what goes to make up the apparent and so I learnt to understand movement. I learnt to look at people, observing who they are by the way they stand and move. People’s characteristic postures are so individual and typically, their stance is modified in relation to others. Different companion- different distance between.

I love to watch almost as I love to be involved, enjoying the patterns of physical conversation that dance stylises. I went to dances with friends and family. Sometimes the occasion was exuberant, sometimes involved, often just communal ritualised exercise.

When 20 years ago I started this group it had thirteen figures:

1. The inevitable ‘wall flower’ I decided to make a man; even with the power to invite, men also can be left out.
2. The exuberant couple, in their expression of physical joy, trusting the dynamics of movement to keep their stability.
3. The couple as a column touching throughout.
4. The invitation, from the man to the woman, to dance.
5. The engrossed seated couple, wrapped up in each other oblivious to their surroundings.
6. The woman falling back into the man’s lap - a delicious accident.
7. The couple stiffly seated looking out at pleasure and movement not quite able, at that moment, to touch.
It was when I restarted to work on them, that I felt the need to add to their number.
8. Two women dancing had to be included. They always provoke questions, doubt and daring.
9. Two men at the bar, commenting with wisdom informed by alcohol, sizing up, scoffing and funking the necessary move.
10. Lizzy and her cossack. I had seen my niece at her brother’s wedding dancing separately and held by another force, the involvement of movement. I remembered the Havana episode in ‘Guys and Dolls’ and had great fun making that final couple.
Of course there could have been others but these are those that have emerged. As I contemplate the group it speaks back about my life, of particular episodes and imprecise accumulations."

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