Margaret Roberts

Research

Since the late 1980s, Margaret Roberts has been exhibiting installation using construction, drawing, video, objects and the interaction of viewers. Recently she has also been exhibiting methods of documenting these works.

Her work experiments with the spatial framework provided by the interaction of audiences and artwork. The drawing installations explore the relationships between found, inhabitable space – modified sometimes with the addition of walls, furniture or swings – and the abstract space of drawings and plans. These works use the architectural spaces of galleries and other built areas for the frameworks, experiences and histories that are partly determined by their forms. The drawings use materials such as unbound oxides (cement colouring), newspaper, masking tape or are implied in the construction. For example, in 2007 Appease the Sun was a large table-like structure in a room facing the North sky, covered with a yellow drawing and could be circled by visitors. Simple performances by visitors were photographed sequentially as part of the documentation of the work. In 2004 she marked the end of the life of the building at 154 City Road as the Tin Sheds gallery with Red Check, a ground drawing in iron oxide that was walked out into the city on the feet of visitors and which people could ride across on swings. In Artspace in 2002 in Mirror Room, she constructed walls based on a plan that mirrored (turned around) its found architectural space, producing less known and rational spaces for people to try to understand by walking around in.

Exhibitions

2007
Appease the Sun (installation) SNO CAP, Marrickville

2006
DNA Converter & Other Machines (photographic prints) collaboration with Stephen Sullivan, Multiple Box Gallery

2005
They don’t live here anymore (floor drawing) in Minimal Approach, Tin Sheds Gallery(curator Conny Dietszchold,)
Unmade Histories (waiting) (installation) Rocketart, Newcastle

2004
Red check(installation) in SeeSaw Tin Sheds Gallery (curator Jan Fieldsend)
Reception, (installation & documentation) Conny Dietzschold Gallery

2003
Promise (ground drawing) DOMAIN: Temporary Public Art Project, Canberra

2002
Mirror Room (installation) Artspace

2001
Cook East Cook West (video installation) SUNBURN, Kampnagel- K3, Hamburg, Germany (curator Anita Fricek)

2000
New Walls (installation) blue oyster gallery Dunedin, New Zealand
Horizon [Sydney] (video installation) SYDNEY!VIENNA! Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (curator Anita Fricek)

1999
150-8 (ground drawing) 20/20 Vision (curator Helen Hyatt-Johnston) Tin Sheds Gallery
EXIT (drawing installation) Contemporary Art Projects Program, AGNSW

1998
Memento, (drawing installation) Canberra National Sculpture Forum.

1997
ground games (drawing installation) Watch This Space, Alice Springs

1996
Drawing on Rooms (drawing installation) Gallery ARDT, Leichhardt, Sydney.

1995
Untitled (drawing installation) The Viaduct Project, Annandale (curators Rose Anne McGreevy & Barbara Halnan),

1994
Untitled (drawing installation) in Ipso Photo, at the CCP, Melbourne(curators by Susan Fereday and Stuart Koop)
Untitled (drawing installation) Nur Gora Rupa, festival, Surakarta Indonesia

1993
Untitled (drawing installations) PURL in Fifth Australian Sculpture Triennial, Melbourne

1992
Through a Corridor Sideways, (collaborative drawing installation with Rebecca Turrell) The Performance Space gallery

1991
V (installation) in Discrete Entity Canberra School of Art Gallery (curators by Julie Ewington & David Watt)
untitled (installation) Steam, an artists' Project for Australian Perspecta 1991 (curators Vicente Butron & Janet Shanks)

1990
untitled (objects) Chris Fortescue Wendy Howard Margaret Roberts, Artspace
Down-Fall (installation) 200 Gertrude St gallery, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Publications

Leoni Schmidt, Playing with the Image: In Conversation with Margaret Roberts, Junctures, Issue 7, Dec 2006,

Ann Finegan, Mirror Room: The Inside is the outside/Zones of affect, catalogue essay Artspace, 2002

Mia Campioni, Plane Thinking: drawing installations by Margaret Roberts, catalogue essay, 1998

Major Grants and Residencies

2003
Artist in Residence, Haefliger’s Cottage, Hill End

2000
Artists at Work residency, Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand

1995
Australia Council studio at Cité Internationale des Arts

1994
Asialink residency (Indonesia)

1994
residency, PICA

Australia Council (VACB,) grants: 2001, 1996 & 1991

Member of the Board of Artspace, Sydney: 2004-present

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