Robert Rooney (1937–2017) was an artist and art critic from Melbourne, Australia, and a leading figure in Australian Conceptual art.Robert Rooney, MCA.
Biography Born in Melbourne on 24 September 1937, Rooney lived in Northcote until December 1939 when he moved to Broomfield Road, East Hawthorn. He trained at Swinburne College of Technology, Melbourne from 1954 to 1957, then at Preston Institute of Technology (Phillip Institute), between 1972 and 1973. His early work was hard-edged abstraction based on cereal packets, knitting patterns and suburban design for which, by the early 1960s, he had become well known. He gained national recognition with his inclusion in the seminal exhibition of colour field painting The Field exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1968.
From 1969 to 1981 Rooney turned his attention to systematic photographic observation in a conceptual art mode,Robert Rooney’. Notes on Robert Rooney, Project 8 (exh. cat.), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1975, unpaginated. prior to which, from 1954 to 1963 he had used a Box Brownie camera to take photographs as references for his paintings, drawings and prints. Rooney, who stopped taking the serial photographs in 1975, said ‘I don’t particularly like photographer’s photographs.’.J. Phipps, ‘Robert Rooney’, in Downtown: Ruscha, Rooney, Arkley (exh. cat.), Museum of Modern Art Heide, Bulleen, 1995, p. 41. After this period he returned to painting In 1982 with ‘The Red Card, Australia’, 1944—45’ based on a Communist Party membership card he found in a book 20 years earlier. He continued plays on such printed ephemera, and it was included by Paul Taylor in Popism, a major exhibition at the NGV of Post-Pop art.Stanhope, Z. The Persistence of Pop: Works from the Monash University Collection, catalogue, Monash University Gallery, 1999
Rooney wrote extensively on Australian art as critic for the Melbourne Age (1980-July 1982) and as Melbourne Art Critic for The Australian (October 1982–99). He died on 21 March 2017.
Selected exhibitions 2013 Robert Rooney, the Box Brownie Years 1956–58, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. 2012 Play, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 2010 Endless Present: Robert Rooney and Conceptual Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Retrospective with context provided by art donated from his collection of local and international conceptual art contemporary to the time.Anderson, Peter (2011) Featured Artists: Rooney, Robert. Eyeline, No. 74, 70-73 2009 Cubism and Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. 1990 The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art, 8th Biennale of Sydney. 1971 4 Conceptual Artists: Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Rooney, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, with catalogue by Rooney. 1968 The Field, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1968, seminal exhibition introducing international colour field painting into Australia.
Between 12 November 2010 and 27 March 2011, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective of Rooney's work, titled 'Endless Present'.
Collections Rooney's work is held in a number of state, regional and university collections, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
References
Bibliography Allen, T. Cross-Currents in Contemporary Australian Art, Craftsman House, 2001 Allen, C. Art in Australia: From Colonization to Postmodernism’, Thames and Hudson, 1997 Allen, C. Conceptual Ascetic, Review, Weekend Australian, 5–6 February 2011 Allen, F. Portraits of an artist, The Herald-Sun, 7 March 2001 Barlow, G; Delaney, M; & McFarlane, K. (Eds.) Change – Monash University Museum of Art, Pub. MUMA, Melbourn 2010, p. 151 Burt, W. Thirty Years of Australian Experimental Music 1963–1993, Sounds Australian: Journal of Australian Music, Autumn 1993 Butler, R. A Secret History of Australian Art, Craftsman House, 2002 Campbell, J. Wide-Eyed: Melbourne, the US and Back Again, interview with Robert Rooney, John Campbell's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (catalogue) Glen Eira City Gallery, 1999 Catalano, G. Building a Picture: Interviews with Australian Artists, McGraw-Hill, Australia, 1997 Catalano, G. Who's the Artist? Gary Catalano interview with Robert Rooney, Art Monthly Australia, June 1994 Catalano, G. Rooney retrospective reveals the enigma of a straight-shooter, The Age, 7 November 1990 Clabburn, A. Bizarreness seen as if for the first time, The Australian, 19 February 2001 Clement, T. Robert Rooney: Balletomania Australian Art Collector, Issue 37 – July – September 2006. p. 255 Colquhoun, B. The Lure of Light, interview with Robert Rooney, Art and Australia, 39/2, 2001 Crawford, A. Acquisitions in Australian Art Collector, Issue 47 – January–March 2009, pp. 134–135 Creagh, S. Open Gallery Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum 26–27 August 2006, p. 16 Crombie, I & Blainey, G. Sites of the Imagination: Contemporary Photographers View Melbourne and its People, National Gallery of Victoria, 1992 Duncan, J. From the Homefront: Robert Rooney: Works 1953–1988, catalogue, Monash University Gallery, 1990 Engberg, J. Downtown: Ruscha, Rooney, Arkley, catalogue, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, 1995 Ferber, S., Healy, C. & McAuliffe, C. (ed). Beasts of Suburbia, Melbourne University Press, 1994 Flynn, P. Endless Present, Artist Profile, issue 14, 2011 Gennochio, B. (ed.). The Art of Persuasion: Australian Art Criticism 1950–2001, Craftsman House, 2003 Gennochio, B. Accenting the Minimal, Weekend Australian, 1–2 February 2003 Gibson, J. Los Melbos, Art & Text 51, 1995 Gollings, J. & Mchell, G. New Australian Style, Thames & Hudson, 1999 Grishin, S. Australian Identities in Printmaking: The Print Collection of the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 2000 Green, C. & Smith, J. (curators). Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968–2002, catalogue, Ian Potter Centre: NGV, Australia, 2002 Green, C. Have a Nice Day Mr. Rooney, Art/Text 66, 1999 Green, C. Pinacotheca, Art and Australia, 34:4, 1997 Green, C. Downtown: Arkley, Rooney, Ruscha, Artforum, November 1995 Green, C. Robert Rooney, Art & Text 47, January 1994 Grey, A. (ed). Australian Art in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, 2002 Harding L, Cramer, S, Cubism and Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2010 Hartigan, P., Robert Rooney's out of the ordinary photography, That Saturday Paper, September 27, 2014 http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2014/09/27/robert-rooneys-out-the-ordinary-photography/14117400001026#.VC9ZrvmSxPc Hay, A. (ed.). The perfect Week, The Bulletin, 20 February 2001 Heathcote, C. Manhattan to Bloomsbury, Art Monthly Australia, Dec/Jan 1990/1991 Heathcote, C. What do artists look forward to after the retrospective, The Age, 13 November 1991 Heathcote, C. Visual art speaks where words fail, The Age, 8 October 1993 Holt, S. & Murray, J. Luna Park and the Art of Mass Delirium, catalogue, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, 1998–1999 Holt, S. Just for Fun: Images of Luna Park and St Kilda, Art and Australia, 34:4, 1997 Hutchinson, N. 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DOWNTOWN, The Australian, 24 March 1995 McDonald, K. Contemporary print collecting: Melbourne's print workshops and publishers, Art and Australia, 40:2, 2002 McDonald, E. & Annear, J (eds.). What is This Thing Called Photography?: Australian Photography 1975-1985, Pluto Press, 2000 McKenzie, B. & Phipps, J. Artists and wunderkinds, Artlink, 21:2, 2001 McKenzie, R. Women still firmly in the picture, The Age, 27 December 1995 McKenzie, R. Downtown: Ruscha, Rooney, Arkley, The Age, 29 March 1995 Michael, L.. 21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, catalogue essay, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2006 Michael, L. The Monash University Collection: People, Places and Ideas: Four Decades of Collection, catalogue, Monash University Museum of Art, 2002 Moore, C. Museum Hygiene, Photofile, March 1994 Morrell, T. Post Mortem Ante Facto, Broadsheet Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 76–77 Murray Cree, L. & Drury, N (eds.). Australian Painting Now, Craftsman House, 2000 Nelson, R. Contemporary artists upstaging with understatement, The Age, 4 October 1995 Nelson, R. Blockbuster to schlockbuster, The Age, 27 December 1995 Nelson, R. Drawing on child art, The Age, 14 February 2001 Nelson, R. Imaginative life of children inspires, The Age, 8 June 2002 Nelson, R. Colouring Modern Life, The Age, 16 December 2003 Nelson, R. The high art of the routine, The Age, 8 February 2011 Neville, G. Quirky, offbeat look at the banal, The Age, 26 October 1990 Nicholson, H. Avant-Gardism for Children, catalogue, University Art Museum, The University of Queensland, 1999 Palmer, D. The order of things: the edition and the series in contemporary photomedia, Photophile 67, December 2002 Pestorius, D. Geometric Painting in Australia 1941–1997, catalogue, University Art Museum, The University of Queensland, 1997 Preston, E. Howard Arkley: Not Just a Suburban Boy, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002 Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Art Gallery: Collection Souvenir, Queensland Art Gallery, 1996 Reid, B. & Underhill, N. (eds.) Letters to John Reed: Defining Australian Cultural Life 1920–1981, Viking, 2001 Rhodes, K. The Camera is a Dumb Recording Device; Robert Rooney and the serial photographs in retrospective Rogers, J. The Art of Knitting, Angus & Robertson, 1991 Rooney, R. Robert Rooney, 21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art catalogue essay, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2006 Simpson, K. Memories are made of this, The Herald Sun, 21 March 1995 Smith, T. Transformation in Australian Art, Volume Two: The Twentieth Century – Modernism and Aboriginality, Craftsman House, 2002 Stanhope, Z. The Persistence of Pop: Works from the Monash University Collection, catalogue, Monash University Gallery, 1999 Thomas, D. Melbourne Modern: The Art of Robert Rooney, Art and Australia, 34:4, 1997 Tomas, D. Golden oldies: four artists who were new and exciting in the 1960s and early 1970s and are still going strong, Art and Australia, 50:4, 2013 Tobacco, W. Robert Rooney: Now and Then, Imprint, 37:3, Spring 2002 Tonkin, S. When visual and performing arts align, Silver lined – Contemporary artists and the Performing Arts Collection exhibition catalogue, The Arts Centre, Melbourne, Australia, 2008 Virgo, A. Australia: Limited Edition Prints, catalogue, The 16th Asian International Art Exhibition, Australian Print Workshop, 2001 Wadelton, D. From ‘Red Rattlers’ to Lara Croft, Interview with Robert Rooney, Art and Australia, 38/2, 2000