The Dressing Room
The text is an excerpt from Cassandra Fusco ‘Fabric representations, the retro, modern and contemporary work of Robyne Voyce.’
Robyne Voyce is fabric artist known throughout New Zealand for her innovative textile explorations of the possibilities of colour and non-representational abstract forms. Her early work in fashion and furniture design propelled her in the 1980s to become an independent studio-based fabric artist, working primarily with original and recycled vintage printed textiles which she combines to form simultaneous fields of structured pattern, vivid, fluid and sculptural. Together with her partner and fellow artist, Rudolf Boelee, Voyce operated the Opshop Art & Design Gallery,concurrent with part-time tertiary level art and design teaching. She has recently opened Pug Design Store in central Christchurch.
From the 1990s onwards, Voyce relinquished conventional notions of representation associated with perspective and began employing a cell-like approach to form and structure. “I began combining modular 2-D and 3-D affects and extended this play of surface and structure by adding actual blocks and eventually combining these with printed fabrics to reference experience, recollection, reflection and change.” This was developed in screen-print and fabric works not so much with either a strong Kiwi or English accent, but more with an international Modernist intonation and using materials that reflected the realities of industrial design and production.
“Ever since I can remember, textiles and patterns and geometry have been an important part of my life. The malleability and versatility of fabric allows for a rich recording and exploration of layers; of thoughts and feelings and events and geometry provides both the discipline and harmony.” “In my work the placement of every piece is crucial; nothing of the design is arbitrary. I use fragments of particular textiles and patterns in what is called ‘simultaneous design’, that is where one design when placed next to
‘Compositions’ (2007) continues the latter but with a difference. There is no hint of disappointment or disillusion, only a confident re-construction of vintage New Zealand fabrics, reconstituted, as in translation, to bring them to life again for another generation. Voyce comments that she has long admired designs from the Maurice Kain workshop. Kain’s organisation started out over 55 years ago in Dunedin as a modest drapery concern. It developed a strong in-house design team and is now recognised as one of New Zealand’s most innovative textile designers. In Composition 3 (2007),Voyce has taken two lengths of the ‘Liverno’ design by Kain and revitalized their central pattern, reconstructing them as a closed, and an open, flowing motif in triptych format. She has, as it were, extended the rhythmic and associational possibilities of the original and it is interesting the compare these works with the earlier Chrysanthemums series.
“I am fascinated in how we perceive and record the fabric of our lives, experience and how we develop these faculties. I am also interested in the significance and symbolism of designs and references, exploring and questioning these. Few objects are value-free and decoration for Decoaration for decoration’s sake is rare, perhaps even a bit meaningless. I think this is why my partner and I have an abiding interest in Modern design and designers. Whether or not movements like the Bauhaus succeeded, they were, I believe, trying to make rational, useful and meaningful objects widely available, as opposed to just consumerist baubles.”“While much of my early work drew upon mimesis or figurative forms, my work is currently exploring more formalistic designs. That said, obviously there is dialogue between the two approaches. Abstraction, after all is built knowledge of structure and rational design.”
What Voyce’s current developments demonstrate is that she (like many of us) is trying to make sense of the present and is doing so in an increasing spare and sculptural language.
Lace - triptych
Robyne Voyce
Silkscreen and lacquer on fabric on board
$600
Swan Lace - triptych
Robyne Voyce
Acrylic, silkscreen, collage and lacquer on board
$600
Doyley - triptych
Robyne Voyce
Acrylic, silkscreen, collage and lacquer on board
$600
Blooms - triptych
Robyne Voyce
Acrylic, silkscreen, collage and lacquer on board
$600
Composition 2 – 6 panels
Robyne Voyce
Fabric construction on board
$2200
Composition 3 – triptych
Robyne Voyce
Fabric construction on board
$2000
