Luminary: Remembering Robert Foster
Friends and colleagues from the ACT, across Australia and around the world, join Robert Foster’s family in remembering the extraordinary contribution this wonderful man made to our lives. Following the tragic accident that took his life on 13 July in 2016, Craft ACT offers a celebration, with affection and admiration, of his continuing influence as a luminary example, in every way. An imaginative and resourceful designer and maker working with metals and related materials, ‘Robbie’ (1962–2016) became well-known from the mid-1980s for his expressive and yet functional and exceptionally crafted hand-made forms, as well as for the innovative designs he developed for production through his company F!NK + Co, founded in 1994 and now operating in Queanbeyan. His many commissions include The Journey, a spectacular group of ‘ossolites’ installed in the foyer of ActewAGL headquarters, Canberra city, in 2010. Supported since 1997 by his enterprising partner, Gretel Harrison, and enthused by his daughters, Ineska and Mischa, Robert constantly experimented with ideas for new forms and processes. He believed strongly in the value of working between art and manufacture, fun and function, materials and processes, expression and sustainability. Luminary: Remembering Robert Foster is significant in that, apart from the now iconic F!NK Water Jugs,every work has been hand-made by Robert himself, as a one-off item or prototype for production. Craft ACT is especially grateful for the loan of all these unique works from the personal collection of his family. Robert also encouraged many emerging makers to work with him, and some evolved designs that were produced through the F!NK brand and identified with their names. They, and many others, acknowledge the importance of his generous mentorship in the development of their careers.
Friends and colleagues from the ACT, across Australia and around the world, join Robert Foster’s family in remembering the extraordinary contribution this wonderful man made to our lives. Following the tragic accident that took his life on 13 July in 2016, Craft ACT offers a celebration, with affection and admiration, of his continuing influence as a luminary example, in every way.
An imaginative and resourceful designer and maker working with metals and related materials, ‘Robbie’ (1962–2016) became well-known from the mid-1980s for his expressive and yet functional and exceptionally crafted hand-made forms, as well as for the innovative designs he developed for production through his company F!NK + Co, founded in 1994 and now operating in Queanbeyan. His many commissions include The Journey, a spectacular group of ‘ossolites’ installed in the foyer of ActewAGL headquarters, Canberra city, in 2010.
Supported since 1997 by his enterprising partner, Gretel Harrison, and enthused by his daughters, Ineska and Mischa, Robert constantly experimented with ideas for new forms and processes. He believed strongly in the value of working between art and manufacture, fun and function, materials and processes, expression and sustainability.
Luminary: Remembering Robert Foster is significant in that, apart from the now iconic F!NK Water Jugs,every work has been hand-made by Robert himself, as a one-off item or prototype for production. Craft ACT is especially grateful for the loan of all these unique works from the personal collection of his family.
Robert also encouraged many emerging makers to work with him, and some evolved designs that were produced through the F!NK brand and identified with their names. They, and many others, acknowledge the importance of his generous mentorship in the development of their careers.
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Part 2: <strong>Robert</strong> <strong>Foster</strong>: designing and<br />
making<br />
I don’t draw an ideological line between my<br />
one-off works and F!NK …I have learned<br />
to see them as notions of operation, that<br />
dwell on a sliding scale between objects<br />
only made possible via hand-making,<br />
through to the objects only made possible<br />
by manufacturing technology. (<strong>Robert</strong><br />
<strong>Foster</strong>, 2005)1<br />
<strong>Robert</strong> <strong>Foster</strong>’s designs have been<br />
described as imaginative interfaces<br />
between organic and geometric,<br />
expression and utility, personal and social.<br />
Influenced as a child in rural Victoria by<br />
his artistic and yet practical parents, and<br />
by teachers from Scandinavia and Europe<br />
at the Canberra School of Art (now ANU<br />
School of Art) in the 1980s, he soon<br />
developed a distinctive aesthetic.<br />
A resourceful experimenter, he soon<br />
became adept at working with aluminium<br />
tubes, reshaping them by also using<br />
processes including press-moulding,<br />
hydro-forming, thermo-forming and even<br />
explosives.<br />
Throughout, <strong>Robert</strong> was interested in<br />
polishing, powder-coating and, especially,<br />
anodising the metal surfaces, while<br />
incorporating materials such as rubber,<br />
acrylic and even snooker balls when the<br />
subject called for them. As well as the<br />
forging and pressing equipment that he<br />
installed in his workshop, he eventually<br />
established his own anodising unit to<br />
maintain oversight of the whole process of<br />
production<br />
He was also to extend his interest in<br />
vessel-making to designing furniture,<br />
lighting and jewellery.<br />
Central to his work in hollow-ware was a<br />
valuing of hand-made processes, such as<br />
the hammering required to hand-raise and<br />
form sheets of silver, stainless steel and<br />
aluminium into the shapes he sought.<br />
1. <strong>Robert</strong> <strong>Foster</strong>, in Vast Terrain: Design and<br />
Aluminium, FORM Gallery, Perth, 2005<br />
Page 12 + 14-15: <strong>Luminary</strong> exhibition, 2016.<br />
Photo: Madeline McGuigan<br />
13
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