"Hommage", the title of this exhibition at the Perth Concert Hall, showcases work Robert has created in a number of disciplines. His is not a limited palette but encompasses the intricacies of hand stitched antique silks and recycled natural textiles, portraits collaged and decoratively embellished paying tribute to specific creatives. There is a collection of ornamented and montaged multicultural portraits including works of flamenco dancers and landscapes in the colour bursts of wheatbelt dry and wet seasons using resists and mediums that are transparent and reflective, large in scale and scope. There are structurally organic and Avant Garde 3D works, sculptural cells and vessels made from found and repurposed materials and objects. "Working in multidiscipline is a necessity for my creative enterprises and subjects, topics, inspiration and influences are as varied as the work I produce."
Mostly self-taught but interspersed with formal arts education, national and international artist residencies, workshops, research projects and working in collaboration with tradesmen and artisans around the world I can honestly say that my creative output encompasses a myriad of disciplines and techniques.
I taught in secondary schools and lecture and impart my knowledge in the technical and further education fields specialising in visual arts, literature/English, and media. Dressmaking and tailoring skills I attribute to my own experimentation, to deconstruction and reconstruction technical practice and the mentoring by couturier Ted Bytheway and atelier Coigne Swanson.I established my clothing label "Robert J Mc Caffrey" and the showroom/ studio "Planet Earth Designs" in Perth CBD, which encompassed an atelier's workspace and my art studio. With design blocks, prototypes, toiles, sketches and fabrics in hand, I worked with tailors and cobblers in Indonesia, creating samples and finishes for my menswear collections.
Not all is plain sailing and not all ventures are as profitable or as satisfying as one would have hoped, but the mainstay and the most crucial to maintain semblance and a sense of getting on with it, moving on, and in looking for what's next, was to keep the innate need to express and create at the fore. It has always, always been at the fore. Sometimes, the disappointments and sadness that accompanies life's journey, seem insurmountable, but, there is, even in those darkest of times, this overwhelming need to express, through visual or through word - drawn, painted, sculpted, printed and or in a combination or collaboration to arrive at a given piece.
The move from central Perth to undertake lecturing in the eastern wheatbelt, began what has been these past 20 years a journey that has been on conscious and subconscious levels, a totally engrossing and of course at times, a rather self-indulgent experience. A train wreck avoided. I worked with and tried my best to impart what knowledge I had in arts practice to my indigenous students when I began as a Tafe lecturer in Kondinin and was rewarded with friendship, lots of humour and a comedic exaggerated sense of sensitivity. There were some intense and incredibly powerful works created by my students during this time and losing some of the most talented, was very difficult to bear. Bless. It is also thanks to those who were part of this regional experience, that I had to find ways of acknowledging our indigenous past and present and acknowledge the indigenous historical significance by using symbolism to establish original presence.
Moreso, a country boy was revived, attachments to people and places, sometimes pub and in home conversations, projects, art exhibitions, the sports club and town hall fundraisers, visions and community alliances and the opportunity to immerse myself in arts practice, research and study ,was again pushing me into new and varied passions.
I moved into the farmhouse at "Maroomba" - a property outside Kondinin, with Miss Scaredy Cat and Miss Pigs Arse (cats) and spent the best past of 12 years enamoured by my immediate and surrounding environment. It was here, that the sacred heart became the symbol for the seeds planted for the harvest. This symbol has carried on throughout many of my works, including the object d'art and 3D forms.
The wheatbelt locales, landscape and terrain was and is the prime motivator for a series of works that continue today. The 360-degree views at Maroomba included heaven and earth, the heavenly gold full moon, the seasonal backburning fires, the shimmering bark of the gimlets after a downpour, the white gums in high beam driving down Koorikin Road and the massive salt lakes - the experimentation with the salt, resulting in a few installations, one of which will be created in the Perth Concert Hall.
At "Maroomba" I was afforded the opportunities to travel overseas and to view the works and research the artists I had for so long held in awe - to name a few: Otto Dix, iconographic works by Mosad Berber, Antoni Gaudi, Ramos, Kokoschka, Rennie MacIntosh, Felice Rix, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffman, Egon Schiele, Klimt, Mathilde Floge, Vally Weiselthier and the incomparable Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
.It was in 2018 I was able to fulfill a long held dream-to go to Catalonia- to immerse my- self in the Andalucian flamenco music and dance and to research the history of the Spanish modernists, namely Antoni Gaudi, lsidre Nonell, Joan Miro, Pau Gargallo, and Joaquim Mir. I went to Barcelona, Granada, and Seville. On meeting Paco Fernandez in Granada at the Alborea, I had lessons in flamenco with Paco, to try and internalise and understand the rhythms and movements of this intoxicating artform. From Andalucia to Berlin and onto Vienna where the following months were spent in pursuit of Expressionism and my innate need to feed this unfathomable quest to navigate my way through self expression.
These excursions were not only serendipitous but put me in contact with other creatives working in other dimensions and disciplines who inspired me to experiment and consider alternative approaches that have since, formed the basis for new works - the Japanese and Chinese artifacts and the influence of Japonism on 19TH AND zo" century creatives.
The ancestral village of Sankt Andreasberg in the Harz Mountains of northeast Germany (formerly Prussia) brought me into contact with Old German handwritten ledgers of a familial past that dated back to the is" Century, and the record keeper Herr Meyer laid out before me, my maternal heritage, which has again, brought me to discover a relative, Edward Frederick Kohler (1890-1964) who has the strongest of ties to WA and the regions.
Edward Kohler was a respected and prolific sculptor in Western Australia. He followed Pietro Porcelli as the second sculptor to practise successfully in the State.His works included the Sir Talbot Hobbs memorial in Supreme Court Gardens on Riverside Drive, bass reliefs for Piccadilly Theatre, Karrakatta Crematorium, Collie Mine Workers Institute, Institute of Agriculture at the University of Western Australia statue the Piccadilly Arcade friezes, commissions by the WA Catholic diocese and the King George V equestrian Statue in front of the Brisbane Town Hall. This recent discovery sparking off another tangent in the attempt to express this familial connection.
"HOM MAGE" showcases my work, some created over the years and as recently as last week and epitomises, the journeys so far. There is so much more that needs expressing and with little time to lose and with the limitations that are grounded in life expectancy, I have much to see, to contemplate and to do. Therein lies this insurmountable need - unless given a timeframe then traversing the experimental and learning new techniques and practicing same will go ,on till my physical and or conscious self loses capacity.