Image by Robbie Rowlands
Robbie Rowlands
Assembled Lines
SAT 19 OCT 4.00PM - SAT 30 NOV 3.00PM
OPENING EVENT: SAT 19 OCT, 4.00 - 6.00PM
FREE TO ATTEND
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Monday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Tuesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Wednesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Thursday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Friday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday 10.00am - 3.00pm
Sunday closed
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Platform Arts is wheelchair-accessible via our Gheringhap St entrance. Unlocked, accessible bathrooms are available on both ground and first floors.
For accessibility enquiries, please directly contact us at hello@platformarts.org.au
Within the Ford factory, amongst an abundance of other equipment, the items that make up the works in Robbie Rowlands’ exhibition Assembled Lines were inconspicuous.
These objects were the foundations for tooling and forging raw materials into production parts for vehicles. They served a purpose, nothing more. Removing them from the factory and positioning them in the studio, the equipment became the raw material itself, charging them with immediate singularity.
Rowlands’ process when working with ‘found objects’ is defined by a point at which the functionality of the object is challenged and its history comes into focus. His capacity to free up the obvious reading of it allows us to expand our lines of thinking beyond simply function or reason, to a state of imagined remembrance of past histories. Most important to Rowlands is the consideration of a renewed purpose for these objects, one that places us at the centre of the work through trace elements of interaction. It is here the relationship between the human and human-made is uncovered.
Rowlands’ primary tool of choice is the angle grinder, and whilst some see his interventions with a tone of violence, his delicate cuts with tapered lines bring a sense of care and attention to the strength and depth of his subjects. In Assembled Lines, cabinets with cut corners are still capable of standing. Sliced toolboxes allow visual access even when the lid is fixed shut. This is also evident in the lockers, with its severed corner revealing the inner space and a remnant, vintage workshop ghetto-blaster. Sections of wardrobe veneer, marked by cut lines, are positioned inside a pair of multi-draw tool boxes. His reasoning was to unite the domestic (the home) with the workspace (the factory), acknowledging both environments in the context of a worker’s life.
Rowlands believed it critical to employ Geelong-sourced equipment, which was then relocated to and reconfigured in-studio before returning to Geelong for this exhibition. It marks a full-circle celebration of what is often overlooked as inconsequential—when moments in history that would otherwise go to waste or become forgotten are given a new purpose with an alternate reading in a gallery setting, forever embedded with local connection.
This project has been supported by a City of Greater Geelong Community Grant.
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Robbie Rowlands is an artist based in Melbourne/Naarm. Through his practice, he explores everyday environments and materials to create immersive sculptural and media-based outcomes. With a focus on working specifically with each site and community, his outcomes develop unique awareness and connections to subjects that are often overlooked.
His practice has traversed local and international landscapes, with significant public outcomes. Recent projects include Finding the edge, a site-responsive project with a decommissioned timber yard in Preston; Riddiford Arboretum Sculpture, commission, Broken Hill; Crossing the floor, Broadmeadows Townhall public art commission; and Responding, a reconfigured 35m mobile phone tower, Mansfield.
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In mid-2021, Robbie Rowlands came across an online web posting for Grays auction house. The auction at the time was for the clearance of equipment from the closure of Ford’s manufacturing plant in Geelong. With the site sold to development firm Pelligra Group in 2019, the vast collection of machinery, workshop equipment, and office furnishings was to be cleared through three auction stages.
Rowlands quickly filtered through the list of offerings to see what he could acquire from the auction with an aim to creatively honour the undefined heritage that was to be sold off. Through careful auction strategies, noting that it is quite easy to lose substantial money through these auctions, he went about selecting and procuring job lots of equipment. Purchases included trolleys, stairs, lockers, cabinets, and toolboxes. These materials were all unique, bearing signs of their use over the years. Some equipment had Ford insignia, numbers for workstation areas, handwritten instructions for use, or references to the company’s alignment to the Geelong Football Club—a partnership that reaches a historic 100 years in 2025, arguably the longest sporting sponsorship in the world.
Rowlands utilised brief site visits when picking purchased items to see firsthand the inner sanctum of the factory. It was confronting for Rowlands to see the history of the site packed up on pallets or at times piled into skip bins. These trips offered him a unique experience of the vast factory setting and came to inform the body of work in Assembled Lines.