Valiant attempt to document Robinson's polystyrene magnum opus

POLY PLAY: Peter Robinson's Walters Prize winner, ACK. Photo / Getty Images.

Book Review
Peter Robinson: Snow Ball Blind Time
edited by Rhana Devonport
(Govett-Brewster Art Gallery $55)

Peter Robinson is one of the most protean and unpredictable of New Zealand artists.

Since he emerged from the University of Canterbury Art School at the end of the 1980s he has moved restlessly from project to project, continuously changing and expanding his visual language, rich in visual and social connotation.

For the past few years Robinson has worked with polystyrene, which he has hacked, carved, assembled, crumbled and piled up into a series of remarkable installations in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Melbourne and Berlin. The first of these, ACK at Artspace, Auckland, in 2006, was later awarded the 2008 Walters Prize.

The grandest and most ambitious of them all, and the one documented in this publication, was Snow Ball Blind Time at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, in 2008. On this occasion every one of the gallery's seven levels (comprising 574sq m of floor space), was given over to a single, vast installation in which polystyrene chains - the links ranging in size from a few centimetres to huge - looped and tangled from space to space.

Those lucky enough to have seen it will not forget it easily; it was awesome in every sense of the word.

Now, bravely, the gallery has attempted to document this in a book, comprising four different elements. First, gallery photographer Bryan James has assembled two photo-essays of the installation - some beautiful, some mysterious, some awe-inspiring. The second is a suite of delicate, intricate pencil drawings by Robinson on tracing paper which provide a preliminary blueprint for the installation.

Third is a set of sophisticated and reference-heavy essays by Rhana Devenport, the gallery director who commissioned the work; Allan Smith, a senior lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts; and Rachel Kent, a Sydney curator, offering various intellectual perspectives. Smith's essay is an arduous read but offers the most insights.

Finally, there is a DVD providing an eight-minute walk through the installation, silent except for the ambient noise of footsteps on wooden floors or squeaking on polystyrene rubble and occasional far-off voices, like the last survivors of some unspeakable catastrophe.