Ron Robertson-Swann (b. 1941), sculptor, teacher and painter, studied at the National Art School (NAS) under Lyndon Dadswell in the late 1950s. During a period of study at St Martin’s in the UK, when he was mostly painting in a colour-field style, he assisted Henry Moore in his studio. Later he taught at St Martins, East Ham Technical College and Goldsmith’s College at the University of London. In 1965 he won the junior section of the John Moore painting prize in Liverpool, which was judged by Clement Greenberg. In 1968 he held his first solo show of paintings and sculptures at Rudy Komon’s Sydney gallery, and his work was exhibited in the pioneering show The Field at the NGV; the following year he won the Transfield Art Prize. Over the 1970s and 1980s he came to focus on sculpture. Having lectured in architecture at the University of New South Wales and the National Art School, he was head of sculpture at the Canberra School of Art from 1977 to 1989, and held the same position at the NAS from 2009 to 2018. Robertson-Swann won a Helen Lempriere Scholarship in 2017 and his works are held in major collections throughout Australia.
Robertson-Swann’s best-known piece is Vault, commissioned for Melbourne’s City Square in 1978. The bright yellow, angular, abstract steel piece created a sensation long before its completion. Installed in May 1980, and officially named Vault that September, it was dismantled in the December. From 1981 to 2002 it stood in Batman Park, newly created from a former rail yard on the north bank of the Yarra; since, it has stood outside the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Southbank. Now regarded as an icon and a treasure, Vault has inspired various projects by highly-regarded Melbourne architects, as well as a site-specific performance piece staged in the city in 2016. There is some suggestion that the time has come to return it to City Square, the space for which it was conceived.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Anouk and Coby Sanchez 2019
© Lindsay Churchland
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