I painted Soane’s last 3 surviving pocket books that comprised details of his trips to Italy. I had read somewhere that it is possible to learn architecture from 3 books, only no-one knows which ones. I was trying to think about being responsible for your own interests. At the heart of this research these images relate to the idea of the self as it is revealed through the ‘stuff’ we collect and how this is then translated into the visual plane of painting.
Having made a painting of my vinyl collection I started in London by making a series of works based on vintage books, paperbacks, dairies and travel guides that I have collected over the years. Making use of oil & acrylics I am interested in how these collections relate to ideas around the spectacle, mass culture, the self and the contemporary notion of an excess of information.
My Fine Art Degree properly got underway at Wimbledon School of Art in September 2008. My journey up to that point charted a combination of part-time diplomas in North East institutions, then onto a Foundation degree in Fine Art Practice which opened the door to the regular Fine Art Degree and enabled a transfer to join Wimbledon on a part-time basis with their Second Year students.
I am currently in my third and final year at Wimbledon and the transition from part to full time has been a real blessing allowing me to focus entirely on my practice which is situated within a personal obsessional world of collections and collecting. I am interested in the close-to-home hobby arena of reading and listening to music, not only in the atmosphere which these activities engender but also in their signifiers, notably piles and archives.
Ian Robinson
