Acclaimed internationally for innovative woven textiles, Jennifer Robertson uses a purpose-built digital hand-loom to create a broad range of woven textiles for fashion, interior and sculptural work.
Her thematic research focuses on exploring relationships between environment, human form, interior space and materiality. Investigating the poetic nature of materials, threads are constructed into often multiple layered structures imbued with sensorial properties.
Jennifer Robertson has exhibited widely in numerous international and national exhibitions over the last thirty years, since studying at West Surrey College of Art and Design and Royal College of Art, UK and Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio, Florence, Italy. She migrated to Australia in 1986, established a weaving studio in Fremantle, WA and from 1997 joined the academic staff at the ANU School of Art and Design in Canberra, Australia.
Image: Jennifer Robertson, Woven scarf. Image courtesy of the artist.
What is your 'origin story'?! Where did it all start?
A long time ago... back in England as a small child I loved being creative and would spend a lot of time drawing and painting, later on making.
Who are your favourite local makers?
My sons Tim Robertson ( previously featured in Workshopped ) and David Robertson (photographer based in Newcastle). My husband Christopher Robertson is a pretty cool maker too.
What's next on the horizon for you?
I intend to weave some large scale inorganic woven sculptures using fine carbon, quartz and basalt fibres with stainless steel, continuing the theme of exploring mineral science/geology and weaving, in particular looking at metamorphic tectonites - fabric covering the earth's crust.
