Robert Owen
Born in Sydney and raised in Wagga Robert Owen studied sculpture at the National Art School, Sydney and Graduated in 1962. He then lived in Greece from1963 to1966 and London until 1975 when he returned again to Sydney. In 1988, he moved to Melbourne and was Associate Professor and Head of Sculpture at RMIT University until 2001.
Owen has had some forty years experience as an artist and has had 26 solo and 50 group exhibitions both in Australia and overseas. He was awarded a John Moore’s Liverpool Exhibition 7 UK prize in 1969 and represented Australia at the 38th Venice Biennale in 1978. He was exhibited in Spirit and Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Geometric Abstraction in Australia 1941-1997, University Art Museum, University of Queensland. Recent survey exhibitions Between Shadow and Light – London Works 1966-1975 was held at Monash University Gallery, Melbourne in 1999 and the The 2nd Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project, Robert Owen: Different Lights Cast Different Shadows, was held at the art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 2004.
His public commissions include Rotary Landing, Queensbridge Square, Melbourne for Melbourne City Council in association with Rotary Club of Victoria. Melbourne’s Northern Gateway, Craigieburn Bypass with Architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer for VIC Roads Hume Freeway Development, Victoria in 2004. Webb Bridge, in collaboration with architects Denton Corker Marshall for The Docklands Authority, Melbourne in 2003 (winning the prestigious Joseph Reed Architectural award for urban design in 2005), Memory Pond, fountain, light and text installation for Grattan Gardens Plaza, Prahran, Melbourne in 2001, Discobolus, Hellenic Tribute, Sydney 2000 Olympics, Sculpture Installation, Olympic Park, Homebush Bay, Sydney. Axiom, a Sculpture installation for the New Commonwealth Law Courts, Melbourne in 1998 and Vessel, a Public sculpture for the Nippon Exhibition Centre, Chiba, Japan in 1989.
More recent public projects include Webb Bridge, Docklands, Melbourne in collaboration with
DCM architects and Craigieburn Bypass in collaboration with TCL landscape architects and
TZG architects.
He is represented in public and private collections throughout Australia as well as in the British Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Olympic Sculpture Park, Seoul, Korea and the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan. He received in 2003 the Australian Council Visual Arts/Crafts Emeritus Award for a lifelong service to the visual arts.
Major references are George Alexander, Zara Stanhope & Wayne Tunnicliffe: Robert Owen; Different Lights Cast Different Shadows, published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004. Margaret Plant & Carolyn Barnes: Between Shadow & Light; London Works 1966 - 1975, published by Monash University Gallery in 1999 and George Alexander: Robert Owen, Transits, published by Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery in 1988. |
