ENDLESS PRESENT

ROBERT ROONEY AND CONCEPTUAL ART

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Robert Rooney is an artist who has a reputation for being both extremely well informed about contemporary art and for not travelling very widely. Some accounts of his career suggest that he has made only one or two brief expeditions outside his native Melbourne—quick trips to Sydney or Canberra. Unlike many of his peers who headed off for extended periods to work in Europe or North America, Rooney has spent almost his whole adult life working in Melbourne, living in the same house in Hawthorne. In light of this, it may seem rather odd to find him so centrally placed in an exhibition dominated by key international figures in conceptual art.

It is an irony that was perhaps not lost on Rooney. In his 1971 work 10.8 miles in 44 minutes, May 1971, he presents a sequence of photographs of fellow artist Robert Hunter riding an exercise bike in the artist’s studio—putting in all the effort, but in practical terms, going nowhere. Many of Rooney’s photographic works of this period make a virtue out of the routine and familiar, the systematisation of even the most mundane aspects of everyday life, from meals eaten (Meals, Jul – Aug 1970 ), to the documentation of the clothes worn each day (Garments, 3 Dec 1972 – March 1973). It is the kind of approach that runs through much conceptually focused art from this period.

On their own, the selection of photographic works by Rooney might perhaps only serve to suggest something of a tangential side story to his career as a painter. However in this exhibition they are combined with a wider selection of pieces, by both Australian and... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Robert Rooney, N.E.W.S., 1975. Type C photographs and pencil on cardboard, 49 x 82cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased 1981. © Robert Rooney.

Robert Rooney, Fenced-off service station, Hawthorn, July 1977, 1977. From the Fenced-off service station series 1977-78. Cibachrome photographs, (a-b) 38.9 x 101.0cm (overall). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Gift of the artist through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2009. © Robert Rooney.