For some, the use of the ‘Readymade’ might be viewed as an empty, meaningless art form, fruit of a lackadaisical causality that requires very little intellectual and physical effort. It is certainly true that not everyone can succeed in imbuing the mere everyday object with a deeper meaning. However, it is here that I believe Tim Robottom truly succeeds. While at first glance many of his works might seem to possess a certain immediacy, they also actually embody an infinite strata of enigmas, meanings and references. With that unmistakable playfulness, which is the hallmark of his works, Robottom does not merely scratch the surface, he burrows deep, creating works that are accessible, yet paradoxically inaccessible. He provides us with the clues, but it is also the observers’ task to decipher the myriad of hidden codes.
Tim Robottom is an obsessive collector of objects, most of which are obtained from jumble and car boot sales, or rescued - just in time – from the dark recesses of the land-fill. There is something melancholic about a car boot sale. People arrive with their hoard, endearingly exposing their fragile entrails to the world on white sheets or rickety pasting tables. It is as if they are displaying their souls on a stage, providing a passersby with a peek through a viewfinder; a temporary glance at a fragment of their lives. It is an expression of how things continually change, sometimes albeit due to necessity or circumstance, and how once highly cherished artefacts suddenly or gradually lose their importance, value or utility in our lives. “Sometimes”, states the artist, “an object attracts my attention, I don’t always know why; it is as if it is calling out to me waiting to be reutilised. Some of them remain in my collection for months, years even, then one day I come across them again and I suddenly see something in them.”
In giving these objects an artistic value the artist is not only relinquishing the objects of the value they once possessed – be it sentimental or monetary – but also alluding to the wasteful, ‘use and throw-away’ attitude of society and the shallowness of consumerism, questioning the value we actually give to the objects we possess.
Tim Robottom is an obsessive collector of objects, most of which are obtained from jumble and car boot sales, or rescued - just in time – from the dark recesses of the land-fill. There is something melancholic about a car boot sale. People arrive with their hoard, endearingly exposing their fragile entrails to the world on white sheets or rickety pasting tables. It is as if they are displaying their souls on a stage, providing a passersby with a peek through a viewfinder; a temporary glance at a fragment of their lives. It is an expression of how things continually change, sometimes albeit due to necessity or circumstance, and how once highly cherished artefacts suddenly or gradually lose their importance, value or utility in our lives. “Sometimes”, states the artist, “an object attracts my attention, I don’t always know why; it is as if it is calling out to me waiting to be reutilised. Some of them remain in my collection for months, years even, then one day I come across them again and I suddenly see something in them.”
In giving these objects an artistic value the artist is not only relinquishing the objects of the value they once possessed – be it sentimental or monetary – but also alluding to the wasteful, ‘use and throw-away’ attitude of society and the shallowness of consumerism, questioning the value we actually give to the objects we possess.
This temporality of all ‘things’ is yet another of the underlying elements in Robottom’s work. This is evident not only in the temporary nature of his works but also in the objects used. It brings to mind the thought: what tales would they tell if objects like pens and lighters could speak? And, as it stands, some of these objects have rather improbable and interesting histories. The rubber ducks in the Duck Soup series (2006) come from a collection of over three-hundred bath ducks, salvaged by the artist from a charity shop that was unable to sell them to the public for health and safety reasons - of all things. These familiar, almost cult objects, that conjure fond and amusing images in the collective imagination, were actually the once prided protagonists of a local duck race. Lovingly polished once a year by their previous owners to participate in the most ‘prestigious’ of bath duck Olympics, they were suddenly abandoned, or maybe replaced by new ones, rendering them obsolete. The installations were also inspired by an accident in the Pacific in 1992, where three, forty-foot containers, holding an unusual cargo of 29,000 bath toys, were washed off ship, only later to be found happily floating off the shores of Indonesia, Australia, South America, Alaska, and Japan, migrating onwards to the Bering Strait, the Arctic circle and the North Atlantic. Among collectors, these usually ‘worthless’ rubber castaways can now fetch a small fortune!
Although only 150 ducks of the artist’s own collection remain, our duck race heroes have been used in a good twenty exhibitions, if not more, earning the artist the nickname of ‘Tim the Duck’ in his University days. Three of them were released in the Thames, one illegally waddled its way into the Hayward Gallery, and another five were almost confiscated by a security guard at the Tate Modern. Countless others, utilised in various exhibitions at Birmingham City University, never made it home. And, here again, in this act of ‘petty theft’ we see the sense of worth that people often give to supposedly valueless objects reconfirmed.
There is also a memorial and marked ‘Intimist’ element to the artist’s works. Two particularly poignant and moving pieces are Grandpa (2007) and Fletcher’s Leftovers (2008). In the former, Robottom skilfully enters the sphere of kinetics. The walking sticks (the legs) and the shoes (the feet) that once supported his aging grandfather are seen walking gangly in mid-air, intimating that even though he is no longer with us, his journey is not over, that he continues to walk in the real world (within the minds and hearts of those who knew him), and possibly even in the hereafter. It is interesting to note that the artist’s grandfather kept those shoes - which underwent numerous repairs because he was so fond of them - for forty years. The latter also flirts with the temporal, if not the intrinsic futility and sadness of existence. We pass from this life to the next plane, our only vestige being the worldly objects (in this case the tea cup, hearing aid and false teeth) that are no longer of use to us. For the painful truth is, more often than not, they only really possess any worth to those we leave behind, and their importance will only have significance for as long as those who remember us live.
2009 saw the artist exploring the theme of evolution and the human dilemma. In the minimal Three Wise Monkeys, three miniature plaster cast skulls rest upon Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, reproducing pictorially the maxim of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
Amidst the many references embodied in this sculpture, it is a clear indication of Darwin’s own concerns over unveiling his discoveries to the world, possibly due to his connections with the naturalists and for fear of social disgrace, and, as the artists states: “Darwin was in a dilemma, like Leonardo and many more before him, and this is possibly the artist’s dilemma too: whether to risk offending by exposing truths or to play it safe.” The work also brings to mind the old saying of “ignorance is bliss”, implying that ignorance and knowledge is passed on across generations and how, inevitably, we take them with us to our silent graves.
The size of the skulls allude to science: “They are akin to specimens in jars. It is a visualisation of the position between life and death, discovery and destruction, the goose that laid the golden egg scenario; cut it open to see how it functions and kill it in the process.”, states Robottom. Yet, on another equally profound level the work symbolises the death of religion, coinciding with the advent of the era of scientific reasoning and secularisation, a process that began towards the end of the 18th Century. The book used in the work, which curiously happens to be the sixth edition (the very first to coin the term ‘evolution’), becomes the plinth, a sort of stage where silence, blindness, obliviousness, religion, science, sciolism, evolution and death re-enact the perpetual cycle of all things.
Meanwhile, in Napoleon's Plan, an unlikely host of animals are engaged in a game of chess, but not any game of chess, for they are positioned in the ‘Napoleon’s Opening’, a strategy often employed to trick inexperienced chess players. The name of the move was invented by the Greeks and was possibly a satirical reference to Napoleon’s war tactics and his inability to stop when ahead, sometimes behaving more like a haphazard novice rather than an experienced man of war.
The work itself, is an allegory of the bellicose nature of mankind and how no amount of ‘knowledge’ or evolution has sufficed to allow us to supersede our innate desire to wage war; beasts we remain whether we like it or not. It is the epitome of the idea that everything is a game, questioning supremacy and the constant need of the elite to conquer and gain, and how everyday people are so often used as pawns. “It is also a reference to Duchamp’s retreat away from making art, preferring chess for twenty years, playing in the parks of New York.”, states the artist, “Chess is an enactment of war, only in chess you are not hurting anyone. The game itself is also like art, in the sense that you are constructing a continually fluctuating idea that can change at any time; depending on the outcomes of certain decisions, your plans change. If you think about it, “ continues the artist, “it is that naivety, greed and hurried style that allows for the opponent to make such a simple move in the first place. It is inexperience principally, but it could happen to an expert and has in many professional games. They are caught out by over-zealousness.”
And indeed, as occurs in war, the ‘checkmate’ in this work is an existential dead end, where there is nowhere left to go.
These two works were originally part of a series of creations exhibited for the end of the year MA show at BIAD in 2009. However, the missing link in this exhibition is a live performance, Che cazzo voi?, that many viewers overlooked. Hidden behind a wall of the exhibition space the artist was engaged in a game of chess with a naked woman, a clear reference to Duchamp, who was rather fond of playing chess with dames au naturel, but also to Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. A discreet key hole in the wall provided viewers with a voyeuristic and unrepeatable, therefore ‘temporary’, upside down and back-to-front view of the protagonists through a photographic lens, almost as if looking at an image on a CCTV screen. And so, we find static sculpture, an interactive game and the ‘living’ performance that encompass a wide range of artistic mediums and formats, underlining yet again the multi-faceted and eclectic nature of the artist’s production.
Clever flashes of humour continue in the mirthfully titled ‘Mo Smoking’. “A pile of screwed up papers in a dated prescription bag?”, you might say; but you would be mistaken, for a lot more lies below the surface. Here the artist’s avid obsession for collecting and compiling strange objects takes an unexpected turn. For a good year he compulsively licked and rolled up a Rizla paper for every cigarette he smoked and dropped them into the bag, as a sort of record of self-abuse. Then one day he tipped them all out and amazed at how many there were he decided to continue. Precisely a year later there was a call for submissions from a gallery in Colombia and the artist decided to submit his unusual and ever-growing almanac to the show. The most curious aspect of this piece, however, is that the meaning lies more in its price than the actual work. On acceptance of the proposal, it was now time to negotiate with the gallery over its value and seeing as said work took a year to produce, after evaluating the cost to the artist’s own health and the turnover of Columbia’s cocaine exports the artist set the price at a dizzying £16,000, or 52,250,000 million Columbian pesos at the exchange rate of the time (the weekly income of a Columbian drug baron and a salary that would take the average Columbian approximately five years to earn), knowing full well that the collection would not sell. “But what has cocaine got to do with Rizla papers?”, one might ask. Well, the price was further inspired by the fact that the Rizla balls look very similar to cocaine’s cheaper cousin, crack, or it does under the customs x-ray at least. Indeed, that innocent cargo arrived at the gallery in a labelled bag, because it had been opened by customs at the airport and the same occurred on its return journey to the UK.
Another interesting element is the act of denying the Rizla papers of their original function, a wink to the ‘readymade reciprocal’ and No.88: A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball, by Martin Creed. But, while it could be argued that Creed’s piece is purely based on Duchampian theory, Robottom’s work goes one step further, also engaging with aesthetics and symbolism, even crossing the boundaries of metaphysics. The work currently on show at the Warwickshire School of Art is the continuation of this piece, propagating to become a potential candidate for the Guinness Book of Records.
The choice of a retrospective for the Alumni 2 exhibition, was primarily to air works that had been exhibited elsewhere and to see them in a different context before they finally disappear forever. The other works on show include: Prize Winner, Crisp & Dry, and Sexy Linda, all of which were exhibited at the 4 legs good, 2 legs better exhibition at Pitt Studio Gallery, Worcester in 2009 and Tu accendi una fiamma nel mio cuore (2009), exhibited at the 'Global Village' exhibition, in Alk¬maar, Holland in 2010.
There will also be a small selection of new works, but as I have attempted to give you an insight into the workings of the artist’s mind, I shall now leave it to you to unravel the hidden meanings!
Sarah Silver
All images are copyright of Tim Robottom 2010. Text copyright of Sarah Silver/Musing on Spines 2010.
Although only 150 ducks of the artist’s own collection remain, our duck race heroes have been used in a good twenty exhibitions, if not more, earning the artist the nickname of ‘Tim the Duck’ in his University days. Three of them were released in the Thames, one illegally waddled its way into the Hayward Gallery, and another five were almost confiscated by a security guard at the Tate Modern. Countless others, utilised in various exhibitions at Birmingham City University, never made it home. And, here again, in this act of ‘petty theft’ we see the sense of worth that people often give to supposedly valueless objects reconfirmed.
There is also a memorial and marked ‘Intimist’ element to the artist’s works. Two particularly poignant and moving pieces are Grandpa (2007) and Fletcher’s Leftovers (2008). In the former, Robottom skilfully enters the sphere of kinetics. The walking sticks (the legs) and the shoes (the feet) that once supported his aging grandfather are seen walking gangly in mid-air, intimating that even though he is no longer with us, his journey is not over, that he continues to walk in the real world (within the minds and hearts of those who knew him), and possibly even in the hereafter. It is interesting to note that the artist’s grandfather kept those shoes - which underwent numerous repairs because he was so fond of them - for forty years. The latter also flirts with the temporal, if not the intrinsic futility and sadness of existence. We pass from this life to the next plane, our only vestige being the worldly objects (in this case the tea cup, hearing aid and false teeth) that are no longer of use to us. For the painful truth is, more often than not, they only really possess any worth to those we leave behind, and their importance will only have significance for as long as those who remember us live.2009 saw the artist exploring the theme of evolution and the human dilemma. In the minimal Three Wise Monkeys, three miniature plaster cast skulls rest upon Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, reproducing pictorially the maxim of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.
Amidst the many references embodied in this sculpture, it is a clear indication of Darwin’s own concerns over unveiling his discoveries to the world, possibly due to his connections with the naturalists and for fear of social disgrace, and, as the artists states: “Darwin was in a dilemma, like Leonardo and many more before him, and this is possibly the artist’s dilemma too: whether to risk offending by exposing truths or to play it safe.” The work also brings to mind the old saying of “ignorance is bliss”, implying that ignorance and knowledge is passed on across generations and how, inevitably, we take them with us to our silent graves.
The size of the skulls allude to science: “They are akin to specimens in jars. It is a visualisation of the position between life and death, discovery and destruction, the goose that laid the golden egg scenario; cut it open to see how it functions and kill it in the process.”, states Robottom. Yet, on another equally profound level the work symbolises the death of religion, coinciding with the advent of the era of scientific reasoning and secularisation, a process that began towards the end of the 18th Century. The book used in the work, which curiously happens to be the sixth edition (the very first to coin the term ‘evolution’), becomes the plinth, a sort of stage where silence, blindness, obliviousness, religion, science, sciolism, evolution and death re-enact the perpetual cycle of all things.
Meanwhile, in Napoleon's Plan, an unlikely host of animals are engaged in a game of chess, but not any game of chess, for they are positioned in the ‘Napoleon’s Opening’, a strategy often employed to trick inexperienced chess players. The name of the move was invented by the Greeks and was possibly a satirical reference to Napoleon’s war tactics and his inability to stop when ahead, sometimes behaving more like a haphazard novice rather than an experienced man of war.The work itself, is an allegory of the bellicose nature of mankind and how no amount of ‘knowledge’ or evolution has sufficed to allow us to supersede our innate desire to wage war; beasts we remain whether we like it or not. It is the epitome of the idea that everything is a game, questioning supremacy and the constant need of the elite to conquer and gain, and how everyday people are so often used as pawns. “It is also a reference to Duchamp’s retreat away from making art, preferring chess for twenty years, playing in the parks of New York.”, states the artist, “Chess is an enactment of war, only in chess you are not hurting anyone. The game itself is also like art, in the sense that you are constructing a continually fluctuating idea that can change at any time; depending on the outcomes of certain decisions, your plans change. If you think about it, “ continues the artist, “it is that naivety, greed and hurried style that allows for the opponent to make such a simple move in the first place. It is inexperience principally, but it could happen to an expert and has in many professional games. They are caught out by over-zealousness.”
And indeed, as occurs in war, the ‘checkmate’ in this work is an existential dead end, where there is nowhere left to go.
These two works were originally part of a series of creations exhibited for the end of the year MA show at BIAD in 2009. However, the missing link in this exhibition is a live performance, Che cazzo voi?, that many viewers overlooked. Hidden behind a wall of the exhibition space the artist was engaged in a game of chess with a naked woman, a clear reference to Duchamp, who was rather fond of playing chess with dames au naturel, but also to Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. A discreet key hole in the wall provided viewers with a voyeuristic and unrepeatable, therefore ‘temporary’, upside down and back-to-front view of the protagonists through a photographic lens, almost as if looking at an image on a CCTV screen. And so, we find static sculpture, an interactive game and the ‘living’ performance that encompass a wide range of artistic mediums and formats, underlining yet again the multi-faceted and eclectic nature of the artist’s production.
Clever flashes of humour continue in the mirthfully titled ‘Mo Smoking’. “A pile of screwed up papers in a dated prescription bag?”, you might say; but you would be mistaken, for a lot more lies below the surface. Here the artist’s avid obsession for collecting and compiling strange objects takes an unexpected turn. For a good year he compulsively licked and rolled up a Rizla paper for every cigarette he smoked and dropped them into the bag, as a sort of record of self-abuse. Then one day he tipped them all out and amazed at how many there were he decided to continue. Precisely a year later there was a call for submissions from a gallery in Colombia and the artist decided to submit his unusual and ever-growing almanac to the show. The most curious aspect of this piece, however, is that the meaning lies more in its price than the actual work. On acceptance of the proposal, it was now time to negotiate with the gallery over its value and seeing as said work took a year to produce, after evaluating the cost to the artist’s own health and the turnover of Columbia’s cocaine exports the artist set the price at a dizzying £16,000, or 52,250,000 million Columbian pesos at the exchange rate of the time (the weekly income of a Columbian drug baron and a salary that would take the average Columbian approximately five years to earn), knowing full well that the collection would not sell. “But what has cocaine got to do with Rizla papers?”, one might ask. Well, the price was further inspired by the fact that the Rizla balls look very similar to cocaine’s cheaper cousin, crack, or it does under the customs x-ray at least. Indeed, that innocent cargo arrived at the gallery in a labelled bag, because it had been opened by customs at the airport and the same occurred on its return journey to the UK.
Another interesting element is the act of denying the Rizla papers of their original function, a wink to the ‘readymade reciprocal’ and No.88: A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball, by Martin Creed. But, while it could be argued that Creed’s piece is purely based on Duchampian theory, Robottom’s work goes one step further, also engaging with aesthetics and symbolism, even crossing the boundaries of metaphysics. The work currently on show at the Warwickshire School of Art is the continuation of this piece, propagating to become a potential candidate for the Guinness Book of Records.
The choice of a retrospective for the Alumni 2 exhibition, was primarily to air works that had been exhibited elsewhere and to see them in a different context before they finally disappear forever. The other works on show include: Prize Winner, Crisp & Dry, and Sexy Linda, all of which were exhibited at the 4 legs good, 2 legs better exhibition at Pitt Studio Gallery, Worcester in 2009 and Tu accendi una fiamma nel mio cuore (2009), exhibited at the 'Global Village' exhibition, in Alk¬maar, Holland in 2010.
There will also be a small selection of new works, but as I have attempted to give you an insight into the workings of the artist’s mind, I shall now leave it to you to unravel the hidden meanings!
Sarah Silver
All images are copyright of Tim Robottom 2010. Text copyright of Sarah Silver/Musing on Spines 2010.
