Artist Biography

Widely recognised as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading contemporary artists, Peter Robinson works across sculpture, drawing, printmaking and installation. With a strong focus on studio practice, he is interested in facilitating the play between order and disorder, density and lightness, dispersion and compression. Historically known for a critical exploration of identity politics, Robinson’s early artworks rigorously examined the valences and inheritances of his Māori ancestry and biculturalism. Over the past two decades, the artist has shifted from this rhetoric and weight of interpretation to focus more exclusively on opening new lines of enquiry into the materiality of the mediums with which he works, such as polystyrene, steel, and most extensively, felt. Investigating both the material and metaphoric potential of felt as a medium, Robinson’s recent practice explores the resulting poetic nuances of his material investigation while proposing art history as an open language that develops and adapts via its own twisting web of cause and effect.

Born in Hakatere, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1966, Peter Robinson is an artist of Ngāi Tahu living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He studied sculpture at the Ilam School of Fine Arts (1989) and is currently associate professor. Robinson’s work has been exhibited extensively in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. He was New Zealand’s representative at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), participated in the 5th Auckland Triennial (2013), 13th Istanbul Biennale (2013), 11th and 18th Biennale of Sydney (1998/2012), the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2018) and the 8th Baltic Triennale of International Art, Vilnius (2002).

Robinson’s work has been the subject of significant solo presentations in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and internationally, including the Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, Whangārei Art Museum, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Artspace Aotearoa, Artspace Sydney and the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, among others. His work has been included in major international touring exhibitions including Continental shift at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen (2000); Toi Toi Toi: three generations of artists from New Zealand in the Museum Fridericianum, Kassel (1999); and Cultural safety: contemporary art from New Zealand at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (1995).

For his exhibition ACK (2008) at Artspace Aotearoa he received the Walters Prize, Aotearoa New Zealand’s preeminent contemporary art award. He has undertaken prestigious residencies across Europe and Australia including the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and Artspace in Sydney. His work is included in significant collections internationally including the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, NZ; Musee d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, FR; FRAC Alsace, FR; Denver Art Museum, US; Stedelijk Museum, NL; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, NZ; National Gallery of Victoria, AU and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, AU, among others.