Robbie Rowlands’ works on the cusp of destabilisation, at once unsettling audiences by challenging their perceived relationship with their surroundings, while inciting their continued exploration. Commissioned by the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Rowlands undertook a three-month residency from January to March 2019 in the Former Union Bank, which now stands proudly as the National Centre For Photography.

Incremental Loss was the centre’s inaugural exhibition and the artist’s largest to date. The artist’s sculptural interventions into walls, ceiling, furniture and carpet enter the space with elegance and poise, indicating a moment of transition. Increment by increment the former Union Bank and its original purpose were lost to time, but for a moment, we were given an extraordinary insight into the past, as we moved through the present and prepared for the future. For BIFB 2019, Rowlands will his present photographic records from the exhibition furthering photography’s relationship with sculpture.

BIOGRAPHY
Robbie Rowlands is a visual artist based in Melbourne. His work explores notions of stability and vulnerability through the manipulation of objects and environments. His repetitious and precise cuts, and the resulting distortions, reflect the inescapable passing of time that affects everything around us. Rowlands’ works have been described as spotlighting the history, humanity and function of his subjects, and his manipulated objects and spaces blur the boundaries between the fabricated and natural worlds. He is best-known for his sculptural interventions into pre-demolition buildings through to utilitarian objects such as urban street poles, beginning in Brooklyn in 1998 and expanding through to sites including a 1950s bus depot, a 1900s wooden Baptist church in Dandenong and abandoned buildings in Detroit. Rowlands’ recent work has been shown around Australia and the United States, and he has been featured in magazines, art journals, international design websites and major sculptural publications.