Lynne Roberts-Goodwin

 
Lynne Roberts-Goodwin (born 1954) is an Australian photographer, video and installation artist. As one of Australia's leading contemporary photographers, she has influenced a generation of emerging artists depicting nature and the landscape. Her photographic work has been described as "grounded in a deep concern for nature and humanity". She has received numerous awards, and her work is held in private and public collections nationally and internationally.
Life and work.
Roberts-Goodwin studied at the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales, gaining a postgraduate Master of Fine Art Degree from University of Manchester, Medlock Fine Arts Centre in 1980.
Awards and grants from research institutes and museums enabled her to study wildlife in India, America, Australia and United Arab Emirates, where she documented endangered species to form links between the sciences and the visual arts. Her "False Tales" series (1995) comprised animal images from history and contemporary urban society, while "Boris the Dog 2" conceptually investigated 19th and 20th century animal discourse. Her exhibition "Blindfold" in the AGNSW Contemporary Project Space in 1997 documented the wapiti and its trade from rural Australia to Seoul, Korea. Her installation "Tankstream - Into the head of the cove" has been on display in Sydney since 1999.
"Bad Birds" is a series of 85 images produced while Roberts-Goodwin was on a residency through the Institute of Electronic Art, New York, in 2001. The images are "anti-portraits" (facing away from the camera) of long-dead birds from the collection of the Department of Ornithology at the Australian Museum in Sydney. From an exhibition entitled "Landings", it further develops the imaging of interdependent relationship of humans with animals, and how human feelings are translated to the natural world.
The artist's interest in historic and contemporary trade and migration routes continued with the several falconry projects initially undertaken in the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and continuing back and forth with United Arab Emirates, Central Eurasia, Kazakhstan, and western Siberia. Her long series of documentary photographs of contraband birds was described as "post-minimalist or post-conceptualist" art. Her large black and white panoramic photograph of a desolate landscape, shot at night under a full moon, won the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award in 2010. In 2012, Roberts-Goodwin made a series of photographic/installation works called SWARM.
Roberts-Goodwin's work invites the viewer to engage with unfamiliar contexts and global structures of environmental conflict and sites of impact. Regarding her exhibition "More Than Ever", "The Art Life" commented: "Completely removed from a secular sentimentality or faux religiosity, Roberts-Goodwin's images are bracing observations of the world as it is, unadorned and beautiful in their simple majesty."
She was an artist-in-residence in Los Angeles, New York, New Delhi, Mumbai, Beirut, Mexico, Paris, and Riyadh. She is a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales. She lives and works in Sydney.
Notable works.
"Tankstream - Into the head of the cove" (1999).
"Tankstream - Into the head of the cove" is an installation set into the pavement in five separate sites from Pitt Street Mall to Alfred Street in Sydney. It consists of coloured glass modules overlapping and angled away from stainless steel lines, creating a diagram mapping the course of the subterranean Tank Stream in relation to the direction of Pitt Street, comparing the natural and man-made conduits of energy in the city. At the final site on Alfred Street the rods splay to represent the delta as the stream flows into Sydney Cove. The installation includes an inscription by Captain Watkin Tench, who recorded the presence of water in Sydney Cove in his diary in 1788. A sixth site was added indoors, in the foyer of City Recital Hall. The installation is one of Roberts-Goodwin's works that have been seen as "a path to return afresh to what we think we know of the past, and how we think we know it through present engagement and dissemination." Her public works have been characterised by being almost invisible, as she prefers art in city streets and parks to have minimal impact on their surroundings.
Falconry projects (2002-).
In 2002, Roberts-Goodwin was first invited to undertake a falconry project at Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, Sweihan, Abu Dhabi, by avian veterinarian specialist Dr. Jaime Samour. It was followed by projects undertaken at the Wrsan wildlife sanctuary near Abu Dhabi at the request of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates. Since then, she has been photographing Arabian falcons and falconers to examine "the conceptual issues of the 'perceived exotic' of place and racial belonging", both as a Western stereotype and as a living practice. She has also been liaising with an assisting ornithologists in the region to develop animal passports to assist the regulation of the international rare species trade and the eradication of the illicit hunting-bird market.
Disappearing Act (2005).
In 2004, Roberts-Goodwin undertook a project involving the Incense/Frankincense Trade and migration route commencing in Oman, through Yemen then traversing the Kings Highway in Jordan. The Disappearing Act project followed the route indexing many sites of prehistoric villages, biblical towns, Crusader Castles, Nabatean temples, Roman Fortresses, Islamic towns and the key archaeological sites within Jordan. Her work on the project was exhibited at Sherman Gallery Goodhope, Sydney, Australia.
"SWARM" (2012).
"SWARM" is a series of photographic/installation works that involved imagining the flight of black ravens in high altitude habitats of central Iran, Mexico, U.S.A, India and Northern Cyprus: locations that are extreme in geopolitical, topographical or cultural terms. Roberts-Goodwin's images use "spatial aesthetics"; that is, "the complex entanglements between local and global ideas of place." A digital photograph print from the series, called "as the sky falls through five fingers #131" (the "five fingers" are the peaks of the Kyrenia Mountains), won the Hazelhurst Art Award in 2013. Commenting the fact that she was working in very remote locations, the artist said she liked "dirty landscapes, not picturesque landscapes".
Collections.
Roberts-Goodwin's work is held in the following public and private collections:
Grants.
Roberts-Goodwin received the following grants: