Donna Robinson

The works of Donna Robinson form aesthetically beautiful and utterly intriguing vistas from objects many would consider at best worthless, at worst environmentally toxic. She takes inspiration for these works from the beach where she lives, where the tides bring in the washed up debris of human civilization. The mystery of these fragments with unknown pasts attracts Robinson – her initial photographs are layered, transformed, and juxtaposed, the layering used much like paint. The beach, the ultimate boundary between land and sea, above and below, is recreated in these objects. Enlarged, cropped, they become the giant features in an imagined landscape, skies skittering above whilst ravines form. The definition and luminosity of the skyscapes Robinson uses to construct her scenes contrasts directly with the abstraction of the flotsam. Whilst the skies are open and unambiguous, the bright, highly patterned landscapes formed from the world’s waste become beautiful through being obscured.