QUT Art Museum
4 June - 16 August 2009
Flop II is a sparse, multi-part installation that combines both figurative and process-based objects continuing Charles Robb's investigation into questions of the subjectivity and representation of the artist.
The focal element is a single, life-sized plaster bust, the pose and expression on which is derived from the facial and bodily contortion involved in performing the 'Fosbury Flop' - the awkward backwards vault invented by American Dick Fosbury in the late 1960s. This ungainly leap parallels the artistic process - especially when the process is one of self-portraiture. Like the high jumper, the artist is always seeking to get over some predetermined obstacle (in self-portraiture this is usually the quest for 'likeness'), while being continually in danger of seeming ridiculous.
Flop II, thus seeks to represent the awkward self-consciousness that frames the making and presenting of art and by extension the process of self-representation more broadly.
