Robin Tarbet

Artist statement

BIO: Robin Tarbet graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006 and is an artist based in East London. He was awarded the Stanley Picker Tutorship in Fine Art at Kingston University in 2006/07, where he now works as a lecturer. Tarbet’s work combines two–dimensional media, photography, printmaking and live film, with three-dimensional sculptural assemblages. Whilst showing in many group exhibitions ranging from the Hayward Gallery to the London Underground network, his ongoing series of live installations entitled 'Monitored Landscape Series' was exhibited as part of EAST International in 2009, and then toured in 2010 to be his first International Solo exhibition at Trafo Gallery in Budapest, and recently has been rebuilt for Black Swan Project Space in Frome, Somerset 2012. Current projects in 2012 include ‘Tomorrow’s World’ which started as a residency and exhibition at Manchester Rogue Studios and has now toured to Project Number in London, participation in a large printmaking exhibition at Kingston University Gallery, and a Ping Pong Table image commission as part of the Cultural Olympics Ping London event.

STATEMENT: Robin Tarbet's practice is concerned with the physical materiality of everyday technology, and he approaches familiar consumer products from a wondrous and inquiring perspective. Tarbet assumes the role of a curious folk scientific explorer, which leads him to dismantle, dissect, and distort everyday technologies and appliances. Aesthetically he examines the architectural and conceptual similarities of the built environment to the increasingly technological yet mysterious worlds within. His work questions the stuff that is concealed on the inside of a computer, or whether there is anything to find behind the façade of the television screen. As far as searching for answers or technical understanding his approach deliberately adopts the material function of failure, inefficiency, and he utilizes the resistance of the objects in providing any new knowledge that can be applied. Tarbet's aim is not to reveal any secrets, but his curiosity is with uncovering an often eclectic and mysterious collection of real bits and pieces that with few visible moving parts or automated actions, work together to create the products desired function. It is with this real stuff that his own fascination with perceived reality, illusion and the unusual effects of scale and perspective combine. As an artist he substitutes his precise lack of mundane understanding with the notion of play, imagination and the potential for what could be, rather than what is.