John Robinson (sculptor) - Biography

Biography

Robinson was born in London on 4 May 1935. His father was Australian and mother English. He was evacuated to Australia from 1940 to 1943, where attended Melbourne Grammar School. On returning to England, he attended Rugby School, where he received prizes for geometry and sculpture. He left school at the age of 16 and joined the Merchant Navy, but left the Navy upon arrival in Australia. There he engaged in a wide range of activities that enabled him to explore that continent. His adventures ranged from jackerooing and cattle droving to serving on a mounted patrol: he joined the last Mounted Police Patrol and trekked on horseback through 1100 kilometres of the King Leopold Ranges of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. In the 1950s, he married, bought a 1,600-acre (6.5 km2) virgin scrub block in the Ninety Mile Desert of South Australia and for ten years, he and Margie developed a sheep farm. Their three sons were born on that farm.

In the late 1960s, he bought some modelling clay and started modelling friends and children, working in his shearing shed at weekends. His sculpting became so consuming that, in 1969 at the age of 35, having developed the farm totally and alone, he sold it for enough money to support himself and his family for two years to try his hand as a sculptor. Robinson returned to England with his wife and 3 sons to begin his sculpting career in earnest. Robinson first worked from a barn studio in Devon in the early 1970s, and later moved his family and studio to Somerset.

In 1983-1985 Robinson opened the Freeland Gallery in Albemarle Street, London, showing both figurative and representative sculptures. This led to contact with several art collectors and with the topologist Ronnie Brown. He and John collaborated in designing an exhibition of 13 full size sculptures at the Pop Maths Roadshow at Leeds University in 1989. The Catalogue they prepared for this exhibition, `Symbolic Sculptures and Tapestries', was widely distributed and led to further exhibitions.

In 1992 John was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, in recognition of the value of his sculpture and his collaboration with the Department of Mathematics. In 1996 he worked with Ronnie Brown and Cara Quinton on a web account of his sculptures, and this convinced him of the value of the internet. In typical fashion, he developed his own ideas, skills and a team of experts. Later he worked with Nick Mee of Virtual Image to create animations of some of his sculptures, and these were used in a CDRom produced by John, another developed by Ronnie Brown in WMY2000 under an EC grant, and in the two web sites referred to earlier.

For an indication of John's style of symbolism and craftmanship, see Mortality `From nothing to nothing, cut from an egg, representing the cycle of life', and also `Immortality', `Passing on the torch of life'.