Robert Owen: the text of light

Throughout a sustained practice of more than four decades, Robert Owen has worked across a range of media, moving between painting, drawing, sculpture and installation in the articulation of his research into space, light, colour and the interconnectedness of these fundamentals.

Owen was invited to create a new body of work for the inaugural contemporary project in the purpose-built galleries of TarraWarra Museum of Art. For the text of light, Owen has produced a series of large-scale paintings, including Cadence #1 (A Short Span of Time), 2003, a massive work comprising four panels divided into sixteen coloured strips, each one a pictorial description of the artist’s feelings of time spanning twenty four hours. Also presented are a series of new sculptures entitled Different lights cast different shadows and the site-specific outdoor sculpture installed on the Museum’s balcony Vessel #2 (Blue), 2007.

Through his ongoing considerations of continuance and juncture, presence and absence, light and shadow, Owen’s project—from his early optical works of the 1960s through to painting and sculpture comprising the text of light—continues to mediate these polarities and generate a meditative space from which we might consider our relationship with the world around us.