EXHIBITION:
The Environment and Culture
– Recycling –
“We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.”
from the Bahá’í Teachings (quoted in Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, pp. 261-262)
About the exhibition
Over 30
sculptures
10
paintings
20
close-up
monotypes
Some of the sculptures
Some of the paintings
Some of the close-ups
The story behind it
by Geraldine Robarts
“There is a purpose in a world of chance”, Dr.Henry Foy once said to me.
In a recent absence from our property our whole log store burnt down – 3 tonnes of very dry logs. Standing next to the store were plastic waste bins, which melted spectacularly into exciting shapes. I found them partially covered in soil. What an opportunity to create works of art by capturing that chance event!
Based on that chance, I created this exhibition of both paintings and sculptures.
From the burnt mabati roof of the store come stunning paintings. There is also a lovely painting in white showing climate change.
As a lecturer I used to tell my students to look under their feet and see what they can make with whatever they may find.
A lot of great art has been made out of “Found” objects. One of my Fine Art students was sitting in a field in rural Kenya wondering what he could do to support his family. By chance there was a cow horn near him. He picked it up and thought what could be done with it. By the following month he had started a whole cottage industry out of objects made from cow horns.
Our ancestors had no plastic, and they found re-usable ways to do everything and would have been horrified at throwing so much away.
How wonderful that Kenya has banned plastic bags as a start to eliminating all single-use plastic.
Technology is also going to have to find lots of answers to ceasing to emit carbon dioxide. What will we do when we have to stop flying around in aeroplanes? How quickly can we move to electric transport using power generated from solar radiation? How can we change from eating lots of beef all the time to a mainly plant-based diet? How can everything electrical be run from solar power?
This exhibition conveys a sense of hope as well as a sense of caution to the future of humanity. It expresses the universality of the artist’s concerns as well as using chance resulting in new 3D art forms which are tactile in nature and expressive in spirit.
The only thing we can control is how each of us lives our life.
It would be wonderful if we could all plant more trees to control carbon dioxide, create green spaces for people to enjoy and feel more creative and boost our culture, encourage green urbanisation and attract more tourism.
I hope the power of art can make the world more peaceful.
About the artist
Geraldine Robarts has a lifetime of experience as a painter and University Lecturer in Fine Art and Education who has lived in East Africa since 1964. Her first public exhibition was at Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg in 1958
at the age of nineteen. Since then there have been hundreds of exhibitions all round the world. Her work is in demand worldwide and is in many private and institutional collections. She has won several international awards, most recently to design the Africa Hall at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany.
She works with oil, acrylic and watercolours and experiments in different ways, always pushing the boundaries of what paint, colour, and new materials can achieve. She has developed techniques unique to herself which give paintings considerable depth and soul which she has shared with her students.
For many years Geraldine was a University Lecturer in Fine Art, first at Makerere University, Kampala and then at Kenyatta University, Nairobi. In the early 1960’s she brought the craft of Batik making from Indonesia to Uganda and then to Kenya because the price of paints, brushes, and canvas was then beyond the pocket of local artists.
In 1988/89 she was a Visiting Professor in Art Education at McGill University, Montreal, bringing the Gusii and Inuit tribes together through their art. She collaborated on a book “Stories in Stone” and curated an exhibition of sculptures which travelled through Canada and the USA, establishing the international market for Kisii soapstone.
She is a Baha’i and has been voluntary teacher with grass roots women’s groups in Kenya since 1964. Since 1990 she has helped women’s groups in Kitui, Kenya. She created workshops for making colourful ornamental sisal weaving and wall-hangings. These are still produced and have a market in Nairobi and for export. By offering people the opportunity to have income generating projects she has improved the lives of many people who otherwise were struggling to survive.
She has done a lot of work on health improvement by building productive fruit farms and provision of dams across sandy rivers, together with pumped water systems which overcame the pressing need of the village women to spend their lives collecting water and firewood and has transformed the ability of communities to grow sustainably in the long term.
The storage of water behind dams has meant the removal of animals and people from sandy riverbeds so that the incidence of malaria and typhoid dropped and the better health from lots of fresh fruit and vegetables meant mothers and children have so much better a chance of doing well.