Bruce Robbins

How it all began. After art school, I began making location-based art in the early 1970s. The following is an extract from some writing I published in 2017. “A year or two before I showed with Jack Wendler, I sent out an invitation to an exhibition in Maidstone. It was held in a derelict house. It had the same format as the subsequent North Gower St exhibition: Letraset applied directly to the walls and a single bound catalogue of photographs of the interior.
The photographs were black-and-white and taken under natural light, so they had a kind of grainy, high-contrast look. This look was simply a by-product of the location, the low-cost photo paper available and the fast film stock. I did not aim for the look or contrive it, but I quite liked it nonetheless.
The ‘art design’ for the shoot was done by the casual inhabitants of the house who used it while sleeping rough. I changed nothing and rearranged nothing; the destitutes would leave an empty bottle here and arrange some newspaper-based bedding there, along with other organic things best not explored too closely. I did place a bit of temporary text on the walls, which I later removed. I felt I should leave nothing and take nothing away.

I spent the day waiting for visitors. Th...

Worked as a Lecturer at:

Brighton School of Art
Part-time Lecturer · October 16, 1982 - December 31, 1985

University of London, Goldsmith College
Visiting lecturer · April 16, 1982 - December 31, 1984
Visiting Lecturer Post Graduate Fine Art
Shared with Public
Central St Martins School Of Art
Part time Lecturer · October 16, 1976 - June 30, 1978
Film and Photography Dept.

Brighton Polytechnic, UK
Part-time Lecturer · October 16, 1975 - June 30, 1978
Alternative Media Department

1973 Jack Wendler Gallery, London.
1974 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
1975 Institute of Contemporary Art, London.
1976 Robert Self Gallery, London.
1977 Barry Barker Gallery, London.
1997 Ausstellungsgramm Ulrich Ruckriem, Hamburg.
1978 Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin.
1979 Barry Barker Gallery, London.
1980 112 Workshop, New York.
1980 Galerie Rolf Ricke Gallery, Koln.
1980 Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin.
1982 Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
1982 Lisson Gallery, London.
1982 London Riverside Gallery, London.
1984 Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin.
1984 Jurka Gallery, Amsterdam.
1984 Edward Totah Gallery, London.