John Robinson (sculptor)

Another of his athletic sculptures, Hammer Thrower,[7] may be seen at the United States Sports Academy, Daphne, Alabama, and in Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne, Australia.

Robinson then embarked on a series of abstract sculptures with the aim of symbolizing human values and our concepts of the dynamic processes which shape our lives.

A 1.5m x 1m edition of Bonds, in polished bronze, was unveiled[19] in 1979 in Sydney Cove by the Governor General of Australia, to commemorate the landing in 1788 of the First Fleet.

Robinson said that 'Bonds' "symbolises the friendship that exists between the two countries, as well as between my patrons and myself, which has enriched my life beyond measure and made the Symbolic Sculptures possible".

Selections of Robinson's work have been exhibited at the universities of Leeds, Bangor, Swansea, Liverpool, Wadham College Oxford, Churchill College Cambridge, London, Barcelona, Zaragoza, and at several sites in the U.S. His symbolic sculptures have been donated to a number of universities, including Bangor[20] (4), Cambridge[21] (5), Durham (3), Oxford (2), Macquarie[22] (1).

In the 1950s, he married, bought a 1,600-acre (6.5 km2) virgin scrub block in the Ninety Mile Desert of South Australia and for ten years, he and Margie developed a sheep farm.

His sculpting became so consuming that, in 1969 at the age of 35, having developed the farm totally and alone, he sold it for enough money to support himself and his family for two years to try his hand as a sculptor.

He and John collaborated in designing an exhibition of 13 full size sculptures at the Pop Maths Roadshow at Leeds University in 1989.

Later he worked with Nick Mee of Virtual Image[25] to create animations[26] of some of his sculptures, and these were used in a CDRom produced by John, another developed by Ronnie Brown in WMY2000[27] under an EC grant, and in the two web sites referred to earlier.

[1] This foundation was formed in 1992 following an expedition to the Kimberley region of north-western Australia to examine a distributed set of rock art called the Bradshaws.

[citation needed] Robinson also travelled from Petra in Jordan to Kata Tjuṯa in Central Australia, visited art academies throughout China, and explored the temples of Egypt, Mexico, Malta, Samarkand and Bokara in Uzbekistan.

In 2004 the website further expanded as Robinson introduced the genetic research of Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, in order to give rock art an anthropological context.

The Acrobats in front of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra
Eternity (1981) at Petrie Plaza , Canberra
Bonds of Friendship in Portsmouth