A New Look at the Local Landscape: Keith Robinson
The latest ROTATE exhibition welcomes South West London artist Keith Robinson to CourtX with a selection of oil paintings exploring the architecture of our surrounding landscape.
The location of this exhibition has particular significance. Five of the eight paintings on display were influenced by tower blocks and buildings in Southsea and Portsmouth. Presented close to the places that inspired them, these works invite you to look again at familiar structures and discover new possibilities in buildings you may pass every day.
ROTATE is an initiative of the CourtX Community Programme. Artwork is exhibited across the first floor of the pavilion and rotated throughout the year, giving members of the CourtX community an informal and relaxed way to experience art while enjoying the venue’s facilities. The programme presents a wide range of artistic styles and perspectives, bringing art into the rhythms of everyday life, an approach that feels especially appropriate for Robinson’s work.
Southsea and Portsmouth
At the centre of this exhibition is Robinson’s fascination with tower blocks, offices and other functional buildings. These structures are ever-present in towns and cities but are seldom treated as objects of beauty. Robinson uses them as starting points for paintings in which architecture, colour and the physical qualities of oil paint come together.
For visitors to CourtX several of the subjects may be immediately recognisable.
Connect Centre #2 was influenced by the Connect Centre in Portsmouth, while Regus #1 and Regus #2 respond to the Regus building at Lakeside, North Harbour. Closer to the exhibition’s Southsea setting, Clarence #1 and Clarence #2 were influenced by Clarence Pier.
Rather than recording these locations precisely, Robinson uses their recognisable forms as frameworks for painterly experimentation. The buildings provide the initial structure, but colour, tone and paint application allow each work to develop beyond its source.
The result is a conversation between the real and the imagined. Visitors may recognise the architecture, yet Robinson’s treatment of it encourages them to see something different: patterns in a façade, unexpected relationships between colours or a sense of rhythm in a rigid grid of windows.
The tower as a canvas
Robinson’s interest in tower blocks began close to his home in South West London. He lives near Tolworth Tower and sees it every day while walking his dog.
“When I look at it, I see it as a great canvas on the horizon,” he explains.
Tolworth Tower became the first tower block he painted and introduced a motif to which he has returned repeatedly. Robinson is drawn to the ubiquity and apparent banality of office blocks. Although these buildings surround us in the modern landscape, they are rarely admired. At best, they are ignored; at worst, they are dismissed as eyesores.
His paintings do not ask viewers to love the buildings, nor do they set out to defend them. Instead, they explore our visual relationship with these structures and the creative possibilities contained within their practical, gridded architecture.
“The tower grid provides me with a recognisable, rigid framework for the paintings and the paint to evolve,” Robinson says. “Using the structure as an anchor, I play with colour, tone and paint application.”
A painting’s palette might respond to the time of day at which he encountered the building, draw upon colour relationships found in art history or emerge intuitively as he works. The office block becomes both subject and structure: a stable framework within which the paint can take on a life of its own.
About the artist
Originally from Immingham, near Grimsby, Robinson has worked professionally as an artist for 30 years. After completing a degree in the History of Ideas, he began his career with a commercial art company. Starting as an assistant, he became its lead artist before progressing to contracts of his own.
Following the birth of his son, Robinson decided to travel less and devote his time to creating his own paintings. His practice now moves between portraiture and a distinctive body of work centred on towers and office buildings.
Robinson has exhibited three times in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as in numerous exhibitions at the Mall Galleries and the Scottish Portrait Award 2020.
Finding wonder in the everyday
Raised in Immingham, near Grimsby, Robinson believes its big skies and everyday surroundings may have influenced his interest in finding beauty in the banal.
He begins his tower paintings with photographs before allowing each work to develop freely on the canvas through colour, tone and paint application. Working exclusively in oils, Robinson describes colour as “everything” and painting as an essential source of wellbeing.
“I’m interested in the idea of trying to find some beauty or interest in the banal and the everyday,” he says.
Five of the paintings on display return to the area that inspired them, inviting visitors to look again at the familiar buildings of Southsea and Portsmouth. Keith Robinson’s work can be viewed across the first floor of the CourtX pavilion as part of the latest ROTATE exhibition.
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