robert tombs studio

“The Mi’kmaq believed the site was haunted and indeed, the sounds of the towers transmitting appeared as if summoned by magic. But there are also more tangible elements to this ghost story. The life-cycle of Radio Canada International — from first days to final acts — extended Canada’s power and influence worldwide through both diplomatic and military messaging and as such, was an exercise in imperialism. It was also a transmitter of humanist thought, a cost-effective media tool, and a local employer. Ghost Stations, the publication, here provides an opportunity to consider these electrified heirs of Gutenberg’s invention as powerful metaphors which presaged the wireless era of the Information Age. The works of Amanda Dawn Christie and Thaddeus Holownia, as human-scale records of space and time here filtered through an incomplete discussion, give ample evidence of the artists’ inheritance from the legacies of photography, film, and electric media. When viewed through the lens of contemporaneity, ‘place’ now includes virtual spaces where ethical issues related to access, authorship, privacy, and security have arisen. In facing the industrial scale of these new phenomena squarely while looking back at history, we might find the best opportunity for critical reflection.”

> Robert Tombs, “Photography, Film and Electricity,” in Ghost Stations: Amanda Dawn Christie, Thaddeus Holownia and Radio Canada International, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Ottawa, ON, 2023, p. 41.

“While the idea of using a petrographic technique to make a permanent mark on the land was inspired by the way Newfoundlanders seemed to relate more directly to the materials at hand, Tombs was also following Marcel Duchamp’s rejection of retinal pleasure in art. In striving to create a despoiled landscape, the now conceptual artist undermines the idea of making pictures for pleasure.

Art historian Lucy Lippard calls her examination of resource extraction economies that are devastating the surfaces of the earth, and therefore the landscapes of its inhabitants, as well as the artists whose work responds to these phenomena, “undermining.” On this more symbolic level, undermining can also be a political act; it represents one of the ways an artist can resist these scars on the planet and body politic. No unassailable aesthetic criterion for such works of resistance has however been defined. Although one might assume they would follow in the vein of land art, or environmental works that ‘collaborate with nature’ by making use of found organic elements to create ‘new topographies’, more recent environmental artists have shown that they can also work with, and then against, the very materials that result from resource extraction processes.”

> Susan M. Ross, “Undermining the Brigus Landscape,” in Robert Tombs: Brigus Mark, published by L'Arène, Ottawa, ON, 2016, p. 25.

“What caught Tombs's eye were the invented names for the metal foundry type I had stuck on the type drawers. You see, when I first arrived at Campbell's bookbindery, I realized the drawers of type had never been labeled, so I set about putting stamped samples of the fonts as a labeling system. Not having any knowledge of the exact names of the fonts in question I invented names according to whim: Frankenthaler Narrow, Judd Bold, Duchamp Italic (these names were in lieu of Times Roman, Copperplate Gothic, Futura, and so on). What Tombs seemed to appreciate in this gesture was an irreverent attitude toward the proper name of the fonts. That, and maybe how references to visual art were being overlaid onto design.”

> Marina Roy, “Tombs Gothic,” in Robert Tombs: Index. Graphic Works 1985–2015, co-published by Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, NB; and MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax, NS, 2015, p. 116.

“L’Occupation signifies, at a primary level, the activity of the artist himself. This is his job. He is making a painted installation about painting and reflecting on its formal concerns as have other artists who have exhibited at ParisCONCRET. Yet he is also ‘occupying’ the space with his work for the duration of the exhibition, and in this regard, the work occupies as much of the space as possible by covering all the available walls. On another level, Tombs is explicitly positioning his work within a history of ‘occupations’ of Paris. Tombs suggests that the work might be considered to allude to the Occupy Paris movement, to the occupation of France by the Nazis during World War II, to the reigns of autocratic kings that led to the French Revolution, or even to the ‘reign’ of French academic painting. Additionally, there is a kind of delusional grandeur to the work, not only in the act of claiming such historical significance, but also in the use of basic store-bought materials to adorn the gallery with gold. Tombs points out that the process he used to cover the walls of ParisCONCRET is a variation of marouflage, a technique in which one affixes a studio-painted canvas mural, using adhesives, to a designated wall. Tombs reversed the process by painting on the canvas after it was fixed in place. It is significant for Tombs that marouflage was used extensively at Versailles, a palace symbolic of the French royalty’s power and influence. With a touch of self-mockery, Tombs draws attention to the display of power through art, marking out his territory with luxurious gold strokes.”

> Michael Davidge, “‘Painting After Painting’: The Critical Occupations of Robert Tombs,” in Robert Tombs/L’Occupation, published by L'Arène, Ottawa, ON, 2014, p. 18.

“The silvered appearance of the paint from the outside has the effect of reflecting the city back on itself like a mirror, but it also reminds the public that the gallery space has undergone significant transformation of purpose and ownership in the not so distant past (from East to a united Germany, from bookstore to art gallery). Erfurt experienced far less destruction during World War II than other cities, therefore significant markers of its history — from medieval trading town, to Prussian city, to the Soviet occupation and its present status as major capitalist city at Germany’s geographic centre — are preserved in its architecture and streets. One could think of Erfurt Window as a kaleidoscope onto the city itself. The emphasis on ‘window’ points to glass being an important material to consider, not only for its association to the view onto the city, but for its significance in terms of the history of architecture and painting. Indeed, given Erfurt’s 20-kilometer distance from Weimar, a place where Josef Albers began his colour experiments in 1920 at the Bauhaus — assemblages made from found glass, wire and ceramic paint — or its role in synagogue burning on Kristallnacht in November 1938, glass seems a particularly potent medium for Tombs’s installation.”

> Marina Roy, “Mineral Intelligence and the Morality of Paint,” in The Morality of Paint: Erfurt Window, co-published by Modern Fuel Artist-run Centre, Kingston, ON; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, NS; and Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC, 2011, p. 5.

“Tombs constructs his parallel History of Photography to question the uncritical assumption that photography is a neutral, objective, and ‘truthful’ record of a person or event. His series of photographs, which he refers to as “an alternate history that ‘depicts’ history,” stimulates enquiry into the authoritative power of photographic images. Tombs’s work draws attention to the dogmatic acceptance of the photograph at face value without considering the intent of the photographer. His self-conscious recreations are overtly artificial, but are no less real for that. Often a distinction is not made between a posed photograph such as a studio portrait of Freud, and a documentary photograph such as the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. By staging impromptu-like photographs, Tombs makes us question how ‘unstaged’ the originals might have been, and thus points out that it is impossible to accurately determine the origin of an image based on the visual result. Tombs’s work deals with degrees of artificiality and reality and the distinction between the two.”

> Michael Parke-Taylor, “Double Identity and the History of Photography,” in Robert Tombs: The History of Photography, published by Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, NB, 1991, p. 5.

< Robert Tombs, Portrait of the Artist as Aubrey Beardsley (apologies to Frederick Evans), 1985