2001 - Peter Robinson

Core Team Members

Commissioner: Dame Jenny Gibbs
Curator: Gregory Burke
Project Manager: Elizabeth Caldwell

Exhibition Attendants

D’Arcy Dalzell, Jane Macknight, Kendrah Morgan, Megan Tamati-Quennell.

Project Publication Bi Polar
Editor: Content, Gregory Burke; Artist Information, Belinda Jones; Text, John Hannaforn
Contributing Writers: Greg Burke, Ewen McDonald, Anna Miles
Designer: Neil Pardington, George Clarke, Eyework Design
Publisher: Creative New Zealand

Peter Robinson’s exhibition Divine Comedy was part of New Zealand’s first national exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2001. It was one of two individual installations shown under the title Bi-Polar at the Museo di Sant’ Apollonia. The other was Jacqueline Fraser’s A Demure Portrait of the Artist Strip Searched.

The title for Robinson’s exhibition came from Dante Alighieri’s book Divine Comedy. It featured a series of sleek sculptures and digital prints using a binary code translation of Dante’s Inferno. It was based on complex concepts of existence and drew together unlikely points of reference from quantum physics to Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.

In his installation Robinson positioned formally discrete objects and prints within the space. Included was a model of a stealth bomber, a stack of lacquered sheets formed from the negative space described by the numeral zero, wall prints written in computer code showing fields of ones and zeros and models of expanding universes in the process of begetting further parallel universes.

Both Robinson and Fraser are of European and Māori descent. Their installations drew on a wealth of European references from Marcel Duchamp to Albert Einstein. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a Māori accent in their work. This tension and intermingling between Māori and international contexts was another layer of reference suggested by the title Bi-Polar.

Divine Comedy was shown at Auckland Art Gallery in 2002 and works from Bi-Polar were shown at the City Gallery Wellington in 2003. One of works from Divine Comedy was purchased by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa for the national collection.

More on the artist

Peter Robinson was born in Ashburton in 1966. He studied sculpture at Ilam School of Fine Arts from 1985 to1989 and now lives in Auckland.

Robinson’s work has been exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally. He participated in the Jakarta Biennial 2015 (curated by Charles Esche); 13th Istanbul Biennale in 2013 (curated by Fulya Edermci); 11th and 18th Biennale of Sydney in 1998 and 2012 and the 8th Baltic Triennale of International Art, Vilnius in 2002.

Recently he presented Recreation Centre in the Nouveau Festival 2015 at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.

Robinson’s work has been included in major international touring exhibitions including: Continental shift, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen in 2000; Toi Toi Toi: three generations of artists from New Zealand, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel in 1999; and Cultural safety: contemporary art from New Zealand, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main in 1995.

Robinson was nominated for the Walters Prize in 2006 for The Humours at Dunedin Public Art Gallery and again in 2008 when he won for his exhibition ACK at Artspace, Auckland.