Neil Roberts Chances with Glass

NEIL ROBERTS 

CHANCES WITH GLASS 

17 AUGUST TO 15 OCTOBER 2017 

NEIL ROBERTS CHANCES WITH GLASS | 17 AUGUST TO 15 OCTOBER 2017

SOHO 

in 1989, and more generally Manhattan, was not the 

gentrified over-priced tourist hub we know of today. This 

was still several years before Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policy came 

into citywide effect: a policy which saw an aggressive, no-tolerance approach to 

graffiti, public drinking and other supposed signs of civil disorder. Intact windows 

and freshly painted walls are a reassuring sight for investors and tourists alike, so the 

criminological theory goes. From May to July 1989 Neil Roberts was staying in New 

York courtesy of the Australia Council’s Greene Street studio residency in Soho. And 

he was welcoming every chance meeting with the social and material incongruities 

that Manhattan could throw across his path. 

“... Harley Davidsons lined the street, a 

band of dinosaurs played Steppenwolf 

covers and smashed vodka bottles from 

the back of a semi-trailer, thin women 

in minimal dress ran errands between 

groups of bikers, or paraded the 

foreground of the band’s arena.” 

On the evening of the Fourth of July holiday, Neil took a walk over to the nearby 

Lower East Side where the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels club was enjoying 

its own “traditional street party” in the block that it owned. Writing about this and 

other arenas of masculinity for the Age Monthly Review (AMR) in 1990, Neil describes 

how the occasion “contained all the icons of a staunchly defended masculine subculture 

– Harley Davidsons lined the street, a band of dinosaurs played Steppenwolf 

covers and smashed vodka bottles from the back of a semi-trailer, thin women in 

minimal dress ran errands between groups of bikers, or paraded the foreground of 

the band’s arena.” 1 As the night passed into morning—illegal fireworks exploding 

between cars and people, and rival groups of Chinese and Italian youths vying for 

street supremacy—Neil writes, “It was almost inevitable that actual violence would 

erupt”. He goes on to describe the beating and pulping of an outsider who had 

“transgressed some neighbourhood law”. 

The final paragraph of Neil’s account brings with it an uneasy restoration of order. 

Returning to the neighbourhood the next day, after rain and city sweepers had 

cleared away the night’s debris, Neil watches as two policemen wearing rubber 

gloves evict “a bearded emaciated young man, filthy and utterly naked” from his 

burrow in the piles of black garbage bags. In another writer’s hands, it may have 

been a picaresque night of adventuring. But there’s no hero in this narrative. Instead, 

Neil’s account of barely suppressed, then erupting, then dissolving violence, is both 

exhilarating and sickening for us to read as it evidently was for him to witness. 

Neil Roberts at Galerie Constantinople, Queanbeyan. 

It was neither the first nor last time Neil would be drawn to the knife edge of violence, 

and render it in exquisite detail; exquisite both in the sense of delicacy and intensity. 

He knew how to express this simultaneous power of and dis-ease with masculinity 

through words as we can see in his Fourth of July and related stories (covering: 

a barber shop in Toronto; the Grandview speedway, Pennsylvania; a bullfight in 

Barcelona and the homeless men of New York City’s streets) that constitute the 


arenas in the AMR essay title. And he knew how to articulate this same complex of 

masculinity through the medium of glass, as you see in this exhibition, Neil Roberts 

chances with glass. 

Sometime in the late 1970s Neil saw someone (a man) blowing glass somewhere in 

Australia. I don’t remember any of the when-who-where details but I do know Neil 

was hooked and wanted some. He moved to Adelaide to train in glassblowing at 

Adelaide’s Jam Factory workshops from 1978 to 1980 and then spent six months in 

1981 refining his technique in the snowy enclave of Sweden’s national glass school 

at Orrefors. When he returned to Australia he took up an artist-in-residency and 

tutoring opportunity at the still young Sydney College of the Arts before Klaus 

Moje seduced him down to work at the even younger glass workshop at Canberra 

School of Art in 1983. By then something had shifted in Neil. Although technically 

very competent, his practice of “working” glass in the hot shop had become one of 

working with glass. It was around 1982, perhaps while he was enrolled in the Neon 

summer school at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop, that Neil began 

exploring glass’s metaphoric capacity, including, most notably, its will (yes, will) 

to break. 

Neil Roberts, Bachelor’s Kiss, 2000, glass, copper foil, lead, wood, 

74 x 96 cm (Photo: Neil Roberts) 

NGA: 2003.378 

Far from immediately discarding instances of breakage when they arose, Neil seemed 

to have an antenna for such moments, as though he could hear the medium speaking 

its needs. Not all such breakages were by his hand. I remember one particular day 

in late 1999 accompanying Neil to the Mugga Lane Recycling Depot in Canberra 

where he chanced upon a sheet of black glass that must have only just tipped over 

and smashed onto the gravelly dirt. Like a completed black jigsaw puzzle, it lay there, 

a perfect, though fragile, glossy rectangle. Neil carefully transferred the fractured 

form onto a solid board and stretchered it back to the studio in Queanbeyan. His 

antenna was surely also picking up the voices of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray that 

day, for that piece of pre-shattered black glass from the tip was like a gift to Neil. 2 

The fractured internal shapes were so inherently right and just that they were only in 

need of some suturing. He used copper-foiling for the internal joints and lead-lighting 

to secure the rectangular perimeter. Polished and framed, Bachelor’s Kiss was first 

shown at Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney in March 2000 for Neil’s Dew Mixed with Sweat 

solo exhibition and again in June 2000 at Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra for his 

Half Ether show. It’s now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), 

posthumously acquired with funds from the Friends of Neil Roberts. 

The titles of Neil’s two exhibitions in 2000 are a bifurcation of a line of text by the 

American artist, Raymond Pettibon. Neil renders the words “half ether, half dew 

mixed with sweat”3 with copper-foil and glass to form the footer (and title) of a 


larger lead-light glass structure with grape motifs drawn from designs of Louis 

Comfort Tiffany’s glass workshop. The glasswork forms a partly open carapace 

wrapping around a well-used boxers’ punching bag that Neil had uncovered at one 

of his favourite Fyshwick haunts. Neil found in Pettibon’s words a succinct corollary 

to the kind of masculine energy he’d been expressing through his own material 

vocabulary since the early 1980s. What both artists hit upon with their respective 

funky-sweet recipes—ether, dew and sweat; Tiffany studio and boxing gym; glass, 

copper, lead, leather and canvas—are elements that never quite mix together but 

rather, become locked together in some potentially volatile chemical reaction. Half 

Ether… was purchased by the NGA in 2002 just prior to Neil’s death. 

Ramp (2001), included in this present exhibition, was Neil’s last major work using 

the lead-light technique. Half Ether…, Ramp and Agnes Northrop at the Gym (2000, 

collection Art Gallery of South Australia) form a trio of works combining leaded glass 

and used sporting equipment: a leather speedball in the case of Agnes Northrop…, a 

padded canvas vaulting horse in the case of Ramp. Ramp’s glass design is a slightly 

decentred slice from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed skylight in the Guggenheim 

Museum, New York. Ramp was made for the inaugural National Sculpture Prize at 

the NGA yet its wall-mounted verticality brings it into the realm of painting. In this 

position, he finds a “sweet spot” 4 between the pressure of the floor inherent in the 

vaulting horse and the elevation of the ceiling referenced by the glass design. Far 

from looking up, out and away to the sky (or heaven), we are forced by the glass to 

look intently through to the sweat stains and roughened canvas brought about by 

long-departed bodies. 

Physically and spatially, Ramp referees between two large series of works in Gallery 

One: the large leaded-glass panels resting against one wall and the constellation of 

softly rectangular glass panes attached to the opposing wall. Each series takes its 

cue from photographic representations of boxers found in cheap and arcane boxing 

“literature”. The titles of the four lead-light works (A Foul Pivot, Left Hand Blow for 

the Head, A Swinging Left Hand and Crossguard to the Left) are taken from the classic 

Science of Boxing by American middleweight champion Mike Donovan, first published 

in 1893. From each illustration of an “illegal” boxing manoeuvre, Neil has traced 

out the two combatants’ intersecting force fields and by so-doing has envisioned 

an energy between the original subjects that the still photographs never allowed. 

In these works, the so-called “negative space” between figures becomes positively 

charged by lead running through glass, discharging through the floor to 

the earth. 

Neil Roberts, Half Ether, Half Dew mixed with Sweat, 2000, 

canvas, cotton and leather object, glass, copper foil, metal, 

244 x 28 x 28 cm (Photo: Neil Roberts) 

NGA: 2002.25 

The space between boxers is more obviously read as such in The Ring series. The 


source imagery is again borrowed (for all his interest in boxing, Neil never attended 

a match), this time from cheaply printed boxing magazines. The poses are not 

staged for illustration as with the Donovan text of 1893. Fast lenses had well and truly 

advanced since then and could easily freeze the speed of a boxer’s jab to catch the 

figures off-balance and seemingly out of control. As the boxing imagery has come 

forward in this series, the materiality of glass has taken on a much more supportive 

role. Neil has all but obliterated the medium’s natural qualities of transparency and 

reflectivity. Only their thickness, slight curvature and overall shape remain to speak 

of the history of these specific pieces of glass. They are artefacts from second-hand 

car yards, from used cars, from the lives travelled in those cars and the landscapes 

framed for those lives. All of that history was covered over when Neil mixed up his 

special slurry of cement and BondCrete, carefully poured it onto each glass panel, 

sanded it back to a fine surface; took his cheap toner photocopies from cheaply 

produced magazines and transferred those body oddments onto the sanded surfaces 

using a turpentine release and the back of a wooden spoon. Despite this elaborate 

erasure, the glass continues to exert its influence over the artist, his method and his 

chosen imagery. Each pane’s pre-given shape dictates the amount and quality of 

space between the figures. 

Neil Roberts and an assistant fix a travelling irrigator to floating 

pontoons in Nerang Pool, Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, for the 

Flood Plane temporary public installation commissioned by Floriade 

Spring Festival in 1990. 

Although Neil was known as a sculptor he was never willing to conform to sculpture’s 

traditional demands. In this exhibition, for instance, few works stand completely 

away from the walls, although they seem to want to. Those that are free-standing 

are precariously so: Show (One Man’s Toil), (1989–93), In Advance of a Broken Heart 

(1988) and One Man’s Eyes (1988). In each of these works it is the glass element 

that seems to offer a life of elegance to its hard-worked partner (respectively a hoe, 

a shovel and a pick). Neil’s gift for bringing things into “a state of belonging” 5 , so 

evident in these works, also reminds us that in even the best partnerships, perfection 

is never permanent. 

Over his more-than-twenty-year arts practice, Neil often took his chances with 

glass. He knew he wasn’t in control of every encounter and that the best results were 

achieved by simply being attentive and responsive. He once told me that he found 

the sinuous piece of barley-cane glass you see in Show (One Man’s Toil) lying on a 

blanket on a lower-Manhattan sidewalk, part of the merchandise of a homeless 

man’s gleanings. That piece of glass enabled Neil to make connections between 

New York street and Queanbeyan studio, between agricultural work and subsistence 

living, between air and ground. It still does all that work and connects us still to its 

collaborator, Neil Roberts. 

Dr Barbara Campbell, July, 2017 


Biographies 

Barbara Campbell is an Australian artist based in Sydney. She is well-known 

for her research-led performances using different platforms (live, online, 

broadcast, video and photographic) in diverse museum, gallery and public spaces 

in Australia, Europe, USA and East Asia. Barbara is probably best known for 

her durational performance work 1001 nights cast, (2005-2008) in which she 

collaborated with writer-artists across the globe, webcasting a story live each night 

on the internet for 1001 consecutive nights. The stories are archived in written form 

at 1001.net.au. In 2016 she was awarded her PhD from the University of Sydney: 

a practice-led doctorate researching how migratory shorebirds direct human 

performance. 

In 1999 Barbara married Neil Roberts and moved to Queanbeyan to reside in the 

former factory-cum-studio that Neil had called home since 1986. As well as making his 

own work Neil ran an artists’ project space, Galerie Constantinople out of the factory, 

and an occasional press, Multiple Constantinople. When Neil tragically died in 2002, 

Barbara stayed on in Queanbeyan to secure the Estate holdings and, with the assistance 

of Merryn Gates, Services for Art, she published an online catalogue raisonné, 

neilroberts.com.au. She returned to Sydney in 2005. Barbara continues to manage 

the Neil Roberts Estate and website. Neil’s archives are held by the National Gallery of 

Australia research library. Helen Maxwell Art is the commercial agent for the Estate. 

1 

Neil Roberts, “One Man’s Eyes: Arenas,” Age Monthly Review 9, no. 

11 (1990), 6. 

2 

Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even 

(also known as The Large Glass), 1915–23 was famously broken in 

transit after its first showing in 1926 and then repaired by Duchamp. 

The cracks are clearly visible in both the top and bottom halves of 

the work. Man Ray’s 1920 photograph, Dust Breeding is a document 

of The Large Glass as it lay gathering dust for a year on the floor of 

Man Ray’s studio. Dust is one of the listed media of The Large Glass 

along with oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire on two glass panels. 

3 

Original Raymond Pettibon reference unknown. Pettibon (b. 1957) 

is well-known for his graphic interplay between words and images. 

4 

Neil Roberts and Elena Taylor, National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition 

catalogue (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2001), 80. 

5 

Things in the State of Belonging is the title of a 1993 work last shown 

with Show (One Man’s Toil) in Neil’s 2001 survey exhibition, The 

Collected Works of Neil Roberts at Canberra School of Art Gallery, 

curated by Merryn Gates. 

All artworks by Neil Roberts and writings referred to in this essay can 

be found online at neilroberts.com.au. 



NEIL ROBERTS CHANCES WITH GLASS | 17 AUGUST TO 15 OCTOBER 2017 

Catalogue of works

Neil Roberts 

Show (One Man’s Toil), 1989-1993 

metal and wood object, glass object 

68 x 255 x 18 cm 

$16,500 

Photo: Neil Roberts 



In Advance of a Broken Heart, 1988 

glass, metal and wood object 

162 x 220 x 18 cm 

$15,400 




A Foul Pivot, 2000 

glass, lead 

185 x 48 cm 

$13,200 




Left Hand Blow for the Head, 1999 

glass, lead 

177 x 72 cm 

$16,500 




A Swinging Left Hand, 1999 

glass, lead 

170 x 85 cm 

$16.500 




Crossguard to the Left, 2000 

glass, lead 

192 x 75 cm 

$16,500 




Untitled [handle/grenade], 1993 

metal object, glass 

22 x 11 x 5.5 cm 

$1,320 




Untitled [bubble/bullet], n.d. 

metal object, glass 

13.5 x 6 x 3.9 cm 

$1,100 

Photo: David Paterson 



Untitled (from The Ring series), 2000 

toner transfer on cement on glass 

15 x 35cm 

$1,100 






11.7 x 31.3cm 

$1,100 






11.7 x 31.3 cm 

$1,100 






11.7 x 31.2 cm 

$1,100 






11.6 x 31.2 cm 

$1,100 






18.3 x 66 cm (irreg.) 

$1,100 






15 x 54.3 cm 

$2,200 






10.1 x 60 cm 

$2,200 






10 x 75 cm 

$2,200 






15 x 74 cm 

$2,970 






15 x 73 cm 

$2,970 






15 x 92.2 cm 

$3,300 






14 x 86.4 cm (irreg.) 

$3,300 






11.9 x 135.4 cm 

$3,850 






19.7 x 99.3 cm (irreg.) 

$3,850 






23.5 x 117 cm 

$4,400 






28 x 157.5 cm 

$5,500 




Untitled [Knife 4], n.d. 

glass 

8 x 22.6 x 2.8 cm 

NFS 




Untitled from Third Rail series: The Distance, 1983 

glass and metal 

7.7 x 26 x 1.8 cm (irreg.) 






5.2 x 25 x 3.8 cm (irreg.) 






7.6 x 31 x 2 cm (irreg.) 




Untitled fromThird Rail series: The Distance, 1983 


6.5 x 24.2 x 2.6 cm (irreg.) 






3.5 x 16.6 x 3.2 cm (irreg.) 


$6,600 for five knife components from Third Rail series: The Distance 



Ramp, 2001 

metal, canvas and wood object, glass, lead 

167 x 87 x 116 cm 

$25,300 




Untitled [party knife #1], n.d. 

paper, glass 

9 x 23 cm (irreg.) 





paper, wire, glass 






plastic, glass 






tin foil, glass 



$5,500 for Untitled [party knife 1, 2, 4 and 5] together. 



One Man’s Eyes, 1988 

glass, metal object 

160 x 85 x 85 cm 

$16,500 



Neil Roberts/Luna Ryan 

The Space Inside My Fist, 1995/2017 

lead crystal, cast from terracotta original 

edition of 20 

9.8 x 3.4 x 3.4 cm (irreg.) 

$495 



Exhibition partners 

Canberra Glassworks is supported by the ACT Government through artsACT and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. 

Exhibition accomodation partner 

Wine partner 

All works are courtesy the Estate of Neil Roberts and Helen Maxwell Art. 


canberraglassworks.com 

11 Wentworth Ave, Kingston ACT 2604 

T 02 6260 7005 

E contactus@canberraglassworks.com 

opening hours 

Wed to Sun 10am to 4pm

Neil Roberts Chances with Glass

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