Ordinary things

Oil on canvas | Robert Riggs

Homestead Gallery 1 | 9 March - 3 April 2022

As with most of my still life paintings this exhibition, “Ordinary Things”, is simply an attempt to endue the ordinary with something extraordinary.

STATEMENT FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

While the still-life genre has a long heritage dating back to at least the ancient Greek world and arguably beyond that to Egypt, it still holds a distinctive and ongoing role in contemporary visual arts practice.  The term denotes (painted) objects that sit motionless (“still”) within a proscribed space. 

Robert Riggs has embraced the still-life as the raison d’être behind his painting practice. The works in Oil on canvas demonstrate his knowledge of the historical still-life and the absorption of that knowledge into his own finely attuned visual language. For Riggs the objects that populate everyday life provide the subject-matter that occupies his paintings. His quietly achieved compositions are eloquent paeans to those things that are often missed in their familiarity and quotidian use. The ordinary provides him with myriad opportunities to paint his world and celebrate the beauty of the everyday.  Please take the opportunity to celebrate what is often taken for granted and enjoy the artist’s quietly beautiful compositions.

Peter Haynes
SAA Artistic Director
March 2022

Front Image: Robert Riggs, Bell with Pebbles, oil on canvas, 43 x 45 cm, 2021