Death & Leisure
2025
A duo project, "Robbins and Roberts", first exhibited "Death & Leisure" at Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucestershire in February 2025 and an edited version at Stroud Valleys Artspace in April 2025.
Death and Leisure is an exploration into their female experience, past, present and future, working with ceramics, sculpture, tufting, textiles, drawing and performance. Robbins and Roberts weave together a frenetic fusion of family, folk, death, desire, myths, mums, truths and tales. Holding the paradoxical paradigms that shift so readily, they uncover obvious and ambiguous antidotes that muddle together in the juxtaposition of “Death & Leisure”.
Robbins and Roberts began working together in 2011 after meeting at Stroud Valleys Artspace. Whilst working together at Stroud College they noticed strong thematic links and became excited by the playful ways in which they simultaneously approached their creative practice. They developed their first exhibition “Welcome to Sugarland” in 2011 in Stroud and have continued working on a range of exciting exhibitions and projects, including the “Robbins and Roberts” Gallery. This exhibition celebrates 10 years on at Hardwick Gallery, 10 years since Robbins and Roberts first exhibited “Perky & Pinky” at Hardwick Gallery’s opening exhibition in 2014.
Robbins' ceramics and prints emerge from a desire to regain myth and magic, a re-enchantment of everyday life. Set within the framework of a remembered interior, her great-grandparents small cottage in Wales, quotidian life is animated through the eyes and imagination of a young girl. Through a temporary disruption of chronological time we can be at once enthralled by the fables and legends in gold embossed covered library books, gleefully digested in cold bedrooms with itchy blankets; and also reinterpret these stories through a contemporary feminist lens. Perhaps the characters can grow along with us, flawed and struggling, yet attempting to do good in the world.
Roberts’ work, mirrors the journey into the middle aged mind field of life. How do we find our “true-self”, and listen to our voice, amongst the noise and chaos of life? How can we undo those unhelpful family traits that seem engrained in our soul? That niggle away at us.
Exploring spirituality, Welshness, burying ones childhood issues and the mundanity of everyday life and work. Roberts is interested in how we navigate death and leisure and journey into other ways of being, in a playful, poignant and pokey fashion.
