Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson

Take a break from the busy traffic and appointments of Brisbane’s central business district and venture into the rainforest for a much deserved break. No, I do not mean a stroll through the Botanical Gardens. Go further south to the rainforests of the Hinterland without even setting foot outside Brisbane. Tucked away in Old Government House is the exhibition Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson, where one can enter into the vertiginous rainforest and escape, not into another world, but into another place.

As the title suggests, the exhibition focuses on works made by the artist while he maintained a studio at Springbrook in Queensland’s Gold Coast Hinterland and lived at Beechmont. The selection of 41 works range across 21 groundbreaking years of the artist’s career, from 1984 -2005. Visitors to the Gallery will be met with an array of works, including paintings, drawings, ceramics and lithographs, as well as several sketchbooks and the artist’s palette. Located in the private quarters of Government house, a visit to the exhibition proves to be an intimate experience, rather fitting for the nature of Robinson’s works.

Curated by the Gallery director Stephen Rainbird, the show is the 2nd to be held in the Gallery since its opening in August last year. The First, Realms of Vision: The Art of William Robinson, spanned across the dominant genres in the artists mature output including interiors, farmyard, landscape, seascape and portraiture. The current exhibition allows visitors to contemplate the landscape genre, in particular the Beechmont landscape which significantly became an inspirational focus for his subsequent works.

Robinson, 74, had various art teaching jobs from the 1950s to the time he began working as a full-time artist in the late 1980s. He has been exhibiting since the 1960s, and with his sublime landscapes, which are included in the current exhibition, he has secured himself a unique place within Australia’s landscape painting tradition. His innovative reworking of the Australian landscape has earned him a place alongside prominent figures Fred Williams, Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale.

The first and most obvious difference between Robinson’s works and those of Williams, Nolan and Drysdale is that rather than the outback they are set in a rainforest landscape. The second significant difference will be noted on entry to the Gallery where visitors standing before such grandiose works as Twin Falls and Gorge 2000 will feel like they are part of the landscape, rather than feeling alienated, often a theme in the work of Nolan or Drysdale. This is because Robinson was part of the landscape he was painting.

Living within the landscape has been central to Robinson’s work. In preparation for these paintings he walked through the rainforest making brief sketches to record as many sensations as he could. When looking at works such as William by lamplight 1990, the observer gains insight into Williams experiences with this landscape. Robinson includes the viewer in the work as a traveller by using multiple viewpoints and creating a void in the centre of the work. Sketchy, Van Gogh-like brushstrokes are also used which give a sense of the tactility of the environment.

The exhibition is organised in such a way that the visitor can follow the developments which lead to Robinson’s works of the 1990s. In the Governor’s bedroom, works from the 1980s show the beginnings of multi-viewpoint which would come to dominate Robinson’s later works. In Puddle Landscape l 1984 the viewpoint is looking up, down and forward simultaneously. The foreground and background trees suggest the viewer is looking across the landscape from an aerial perspective. In contrast to this, the puddles are seen from a perspective of looking down from directly above, and the viewer is able to see the sky in the reflection.



Sense of time, another element which became significant in Robinson’s later works, is evident in Sunset with riders 1986 which depicts a sunset in the centre of the canvas and night sky to the left. In his Rainforest works Robinson uses multiple viewpoints to create a sense of the combined feelings experienced in the landscape and united moments in time.

Further development of these elements is seen in the next bedroom, where works from the latter part of the 1980s show a transition from earlier figure-landscape works to a new phase primarily focused on the landscape itself. Watercolours and lithographs such as Late Sunlight and Afternoon cloud, Beechmont 1993 reveal explorations into the effects of light at different times of day and in different weather conditions. A superb colourist with the utmost attention to dense and carefully considered detail, Robinson captures the various rainforest conditions––from mist and rain to sunlight; and from morning light to evening shadows––in his phenomenal landscapes.

Standing before the awe-inspiring rainforest works of the 1990s onwards, one can’t escape feeling physically affected by the swirling subject matter. If you visit the exhibition you are bound to see, as I did, a spectator standing before a painting such as The ant tree landscape 1992 turning their body this way and that trying to find a single view point. Take note that if you try to achieve this you will inevitably fail. These paintings are not made to be seen, but to be experienced, and as Robinson himself said ‘such pictures cannot be understood if they are not felt physically.’

Robinson was no stranger to vertigo. He discovered this feeling on his first encounters with the steep landscape and cliffs of Springbrook. These responses were particularly severe during his early residence in the rainforest, but subsided as he got to know the land better. At first glance, the feeling of being physically pulled into the swirling work is strong enough to create a sense of vertigo. As you continue to look at the painting you develop a more exploratory nature and the vertiginous feeling subsides. In this sense we experience the feelings of the artist as he explored his landscape.

In the presence of these works one feels what it would be like for the figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog 1818, as he stands before the powerful, untamed forces of nature. Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson will not only take you on a journey through the wonders of the Hinterland Rainforest, but will also guide you on an intimate journey through the remarkable career of William Robinson during his time at Beechmont.

Hinterland: The Rainforest Works of William Robinson is at The William Robinson Gallery until 3 April 2011.