Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/robyne-latham

Birth Place

Narrogin, WA, Australia

Biography

Robyne Latham, Yamatji woman, was born in 1956 in the town of Narrogin in rural Western Australia. Her art practice spans sculptural works in ceramics and bronze, set designs for theatre and ephemeral installation works. Latham spent her childhood in the West Australian wheatbelt and moved to Perth as a teenager when she was awarded a five year music scholarship to attend the Perth Modern School. There she was trained in classical music and achieved the entrance requirements to the University of Western Australia for a performance degree in her instrument of choice, the cello. She decided against this option (although the cello remained her favorite instrument) and chose to study ceramics.In 1974 Latham began a three year Diploma in Advanced Ceramics at the Perth Technical College. In the college studio she discovered pot-shards which intrigued her and engaged her imagination. She learnt that these shards were remnants of works created by Petrus Spronk, a former lecturer at the college. Spronk’s work came to have a major influence upon her early art practice. She particularly remembers his 'performance’ (some ten years later) at the Fourth National Ceramics Conference, held in Melbourne in 1985. Spronk came on stage in a suit and tie, and proceeded to strip to his blue singlet and shorts. He then sat at his pottery wheel and threw a pot. For Latham, this act brought an end to the deferential habit of 'placing one’s hero potter on a pedestal’, and made real the fact that once in the studio – faced with just themselves – all artists become equal. This truth has remained a constant throughout her art practice. Latham’s Diploma culminated in her first solo exhibition, 'New Works’, at the Undercroft Gallery at the University of Western Australia, in 1978.Latham’s art practice was further shaped by the experience of living, travelling and studying in Japan and India from 1981 to 1983. While living in Tokyo for eighteen months, Latham fell in love with the Japanese ideal of Wabi Sabi, an aesthetic founded in the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete. The significance of impermanence has been an enduring concern in her artwork. From Tokyo, Latham spent six months travelling throughout India. This was a life changing experience for her: even though she anticipated a culture shock upon arriving in India, she was stunned at the social and economic inequalities of daily life. The mass acceptance of the forces of karma in one’s life permitted crushing poverty and extreme opulence to coexist. The fact that these realities lived side by side, and were accompanied by an omnipresent sense of the sacred, forced Latham to reassess much of what made meaning in her life. After returning to Perth, Latham undertook a Bachelor of Fine Art at Curtin University, graduating with a ceramics major in 1986. During her undergraduate degree the works of Joseph Beuys and his notion of the 'urban shaman’ became enormously influential. In 1987 she completed a Diploma of Education at Edith Cowan University.Latham moved to Melbourne in 1989 and in 1994 she established a studio. At this time, in addition to the work of Petrus Spronk, Latham’s ceramic forms came to be directly influenced by the Pueblo potter, Maria Martinez. Through researching Martinez’s terra sigillata techniques, Latham began a long series of experiments in form, surface mark-making and firing. After throwing, carving and burnishing her ceramic forms, Latham employs terra sigillata, in a saggar firing. This involves placing the artwork into a saggar – a box-like container, into which pigments and organic materials are carefully and strategically placed. When fired, the vaporized pigments and the organic materials create a blush or patternation on the object. Latham sustains a high loss rate with this type of firing but is reconciled with this as the distinctiveness of the works that do survive and the sense of gratification at having achieved the aesthetic she desires justify the losses.In 1995 Latham’s sculptural ceramics were exhibited alongside the canvas works of her sister Christine Latham in 'White Out’ at the Yume-Ya Gallery, for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. The following year Latham returned to live in Perth, where she relocated her studio art practice. In 1998 the Latham sisters were awarded a Professional Development Grant by the Australia Council for the Arts, supporting the research and development of the exhibition 'Sisters’, which was held at Indigenart, Mossenson Galleries in Perth. In 1999 they again exhibited together in 'Latham and Latham’ at Indigenart, Mossenson Galleries in Fremantle. In that year Latham also staged an exhibition with Jody Broun at Mary Place Gallery in Sydney. Latham has exhibited extensively in group exhibitions throughout her career, including the Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards of 1999 and 2000 and 'Envisaging the Sacred’ at the Maroondah Art Gallery in 2007.In 2004 Latham began a Masters of Fine Arts by research at Monash University. This gave her the opportunity to further pursue the conceptual and aesthetic preoccupations that emerged during her undergraduate years, including the Wabi Sabi aesthetic, and the notion of the urban shaman. Latham’s second solo exhibition 'Metal Blue Dreaming’ took place at the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne in 2007. This exhibition displayed her more recent sculptural works which explored the psychology of one’s internal landscape and the paradox of the human condition. In particular, they are reflections upon the tensions that exist between the sacred and the secular, where greed and violence co-habit with beauty and harmony. These themes are addressed through figurative bronze sculptures, abstract ceramic forms and, later, ephemeral installations dedicated to the Stolen Generations of Australia.Latham’s set design practice began in 1996, when she accepted an invitation from the Indigenous playwright Jane Harrison to create the original set for her play Stolen which – in response to the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders from their Families – narrated the experiences of members of the Stolen Generations. In 2000, after spending three years in Perth, Latham returned to Melbourne and designed and constructed the set for John Harding’s play Don’t Knock the Block (2000). This led to further set design work in Indigenous theatre, including for Richard Franklin’s Magpie at the Melbourne Workers Theatre (2001) and a suite of plays for the 'Blak Inside Season’ at the Playbox Theatre Company in Melbourne (2002). In 2006, she designed and constructed the gallery-set for Tribal Expressions at the Arts Centre’s Black Box Theatre. This set served as an exhibition space by day, and was converted to a cabaret space by night, and showcased Indigenous artists and performers throughout the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. In 2007 Latham designed and constructed the set for La Mama Poetica at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. This set was dedicated to Lisa Bellair, the Indigenous activist, poet, broadcaster and dramatist who had passed away in 2006.Latham’s sculptural art works have been acquired by a number of institutions, including the Curtin University Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, the Western Australian Museum, Berndt Museum of Anthropology, the University of Western Australia and the Koorie Heritage Trust.Latham has also had an academic career, having worked as a lecturer in Behavioral Health Sciences at La Trobe University and in the Bachelor of Arts degree program in Visual Communication at the Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University; and as a researcher at ARCSHS (The Australian Centre for Sex Health and Society) and The Bouverie Centre, La Trobe University. Writers: Latham, RobyneNote: Fisher, LauraNote: Date written: 2011 Last updated: 2011 Status: peer-reviewed

Born

b. 1956

Summary

Melbourne based Indigenous artist who works predominantly with sculptural ceramics and bronzes to address the tensions between the secular and the sacred and the paradox of the human condition.

Gender

Female

Died

None listed

Age at death

None listed