Robert Rooney
1950 - School arts design: early bird 2001- acrylic on canvas
Robert Rooney was a Melbourne-based art critic, painter and photographer and a key proponent of conceptual art in Australia.
Rooney's work first came to prominence in the seminal exhibition The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 1968 - the first major exhibition to profile the work of contemporary artists at the vanguard of Australian geometric abstraction.
Drawing on this foundation in abstraction, and interested by the aesthetics and humour of pop-art and comics - he made lively paintings often inspired by everyday items and commercial images such as knitting patterns, advertisements, commercial illustrations and shop displays.
His art is represented in leading collections around Australia and has featured in surveys at the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 8th Biennale of Sydney, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.