Robert Rooney

Robert Rooney (1937–2017) was an artist and art critic from Melbourne, Australia, and a leading figure in Australian Conceptual art.[1]

Robert Rooney
Born24 September 1937
Melbourne, Australia
Died21 March 2017(2017-03-21) (aged 79)
NationalityAustralian
Known forConceptual art, Painting, Photography

Biography

Born in Melbourne on 24 September 1937, Rooney lived in Northcote until December 1939 when he moved to Broomfield Road, East Hawthorn. He trained at Swinburne College of Technology, Melbourne from 1954 to 1957, then at Preston Institute of Technology (Phillip Institute), Preston, between 1972 and 1973. His early work was hard-edged abstraction based on cereal packets, knitting patterns and suburban design for which, by the early 1960s, he had become well known, and for which he gained national recognition with his inclusion in the seminal exhibition of colour field painting The Field exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1968.

From 1969 to 1981 Rooney turned his attention to systematic photographic observation in a conceptual art mode,[2] prior to which, from 1954 to 1963 he had used a Box Brownie camera to take photographs as references for his paintings, drawings and prints. Rooney, who stopped taking the serial photographs in 1975, said ‘I don’t particularly like photographer’s photographs.’.[3] After this period he returned to painting In 1982 with ‘The Red Card, Australia’, 1944—45’ based on a Communist Party membership card he found in a book 20 years earlier. He continued plays on such printed ephemera, and it was included by Paul Taylor in Popism, a major exhibition at the NGV of Post-Pop art.[4]

Rooney wrote extensively on Australian art as critic for The Age (1980-July 1982) and as Melbourne Art Critic for The Australian (October 1982–99). He died on 21 March 2017.

Selected exhibitions
  • 2013 Robert Rooney, the Box Brownie Years 1956–58, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.
  • 2012 Play, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
  • 2010 Endless Present: Robert Rooney and Conceptual Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Retrospective with context provided by art donated from his collection of local and international conceptual art contemporary to the time.[5]
  • 2009 Cubism and Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.
  • 1990 The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art, 8th Biennale of Sydney.
  • 1971 4 Conceptual Artists: Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Rooney, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, with catalogue by Rooney.[6]
  • 1968 The Field, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1968, seminal exhibition introducing international colour field painting into Australia.

Between 12 November 2010 and 27 March 2011, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective of Rooney's work, titled 'Endless Present', w

Collections

Rooney's work is held in a number of state, regional and university collections, including:

References
  1. Robert Rooney, MCA.
  2. Robert Rooney’. Notes on Robert Rooney, Project 8 (exh. cat.), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1975, unpaginated.
  3. J. Phipps, ‘Robert Rooney’, in Downtown: Ruscha, Rooney, Arkley (exh. cat.), Museum of Modern Art Heide, Bulleen, 1995, p. 41.
  4. Stanhope, Z. The Persistence of Pop: Works from the Monash University Collection, catalogue, Monash University Gallery, 1999
  5. Anderson, Peter (2011) Featured Artists: Rooney, Robert. Eyeline, No. 74, 70-73
  6. "Pinacotheca (c. 1971) issue 1, edited by Robert Rooney, published by Pinacotheca Gallery, Melbourne, (c. 1971)". Retrieved 24 July 2019.

Bibliography
  • Allen, T. Cross-Currents in Contemporary Australian Art, Craftsman House, 2001
  • Allen, C. Art in Australia: From Colonization to Postmodernism’, Thames and Hudson, 1997
  • Allen, C. Conceptual Ascetic, Review, Weekend Australian, 5–6 February 2011
  • Allen, F. Portraits of an artist, The Herald-Sun, 7 March 2001
  • Barlow, G; Delaney, M; & McFarlane, K. (Eds.) Change – Monash University Museum of Art, Pub. MUMA, Melbourn 2010, p. 151
  • Burt, W. Thirty Years of Australian Experimental Music 1963–1993, Sounds Australian: Journal of Australian Music, Autumn 1993
  • Butler, R. A Secret History of Australian Art, Craftsman House, 2002
  • Campbell, J. Wide-Eyed: Melbourne, the US and Back Again, interview with Robert Rooney, John Campbell's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (catalogue) Glen Eira City Gallery, 1999
  • Catalano, G. Building a Picture: Interviews with Australian Artists, McGraw-Hill, Australia, 1997
  • Catalano, G. Who's the Artist? Gary Catalano interview with Robert Rooney, Art Monthly Australia, June 1994
  • Catalano, G. Rooney retrospective reveals the enigma of a straight-shooter, The Age, 7 November 1990
  • Clabburn, A. Bizarreness seen as if for the first time, The Australian, 19 February 2001
  • Clement, T. Robert Rooney: Balletomania Australian Art Collector, Issue 37 – July – September 2006. p. 255
  • Colquhoun, B. The Lure of Light, interview with Robert Rooney, Art and Australia, 39/2, 2001
  • Crawford, A. Acquisitions in Australian Art Collector, Issue 47 – January–March 2009, pp. 134–135
  • Creagh, S. Open Gallery Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum 26–27 August 2006, p. 16
  • Crombie, I & Blainey, G. Sites of the Imagination: Contemporary Photographers View Melbourne and its People, National Gallery of Victoria, 1992
  • Duncan, J. From the Homefront: Robert Rooney: Works 1953–1988, catalogue, Monash University Gallery, 1990
  • Engberg, J. Downtown: Ruscha, Rooney, Arkley, catalogue, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, 1995
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