Equestrian Monument
Equestrian Monument
By David Robinson
David Robinson’s Equestrian Monument is the seminal work in what has become a recurring theme in Robinson’s oeuvre; its inconclusive narrative moment binding motifs both mythical and historical. The gaze of the rider is set upon some unseen horizon, as the burdened beast labours, very much in the here-and-now. Together they negotiate a terrain away from the past, away from the binding paradigms of fate, but still towards an uncertain future.
“The equestrian monument prevails in endless variety across the history of art. In a time before I had learned of their often violent and imperial past, with the eyes of a child I saw these archaic bronzes in their simplest and most mythic form: full of narrative, free of history.
The first impression has stayed with me as I find myself returning time and again to the unraveling and reprising of the equestrian theme in my own artwork. Now thoroughly out-moded, and thus freed of its political harness,I periodically inquire after this troubled partnership of man and beast as they wander the imagination – a vivid motif in search of a better story.”
David Robinson – October 2009
