KATHY ROBINS

A collection of works from RE-TURN exhibition.

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The installation Guardians combines natural materials (tree and shrub branches) with clay and bronze amorphous figurines that cling to their wooden hosts and can fit in one’s hand. The small talisman-like objects, that bear the imprint of their creator’s palms, are meant to occupy a space between the mythical and the real world. Inspired by the character of golem from the Jewish folkloric tradition, they come into being as symbolic receptacles of human hopes, aspirations and fears, but, in the hands of the artist, speak to our universal search for a place of refuge from the world in crisis. They are believed to have the power to protect as well as to destroy depending on the circumstances and the way they are treated. They come from dust and they turn back to dust when their power is no more. In Robins’s installation they appear as a flock of migratory birds, fleeting and impermanent dwellers of precarious spaces. Their fragility speaks to our own sense of vulnerability and impermanence in the face of environmental disasters holding our hopes for the future in their delicate grip.