Learmount: Painting: A Changed Environment at Messums West

Learmount (2025) develops from Robinson's practice-led research into painting as an expanded material object. Produced on a sculptural canvas stuffed with raw Irish sheep's wool, the work positions the stretcher not as a neutral support but as an active structural component through which the painting is formed. The introduction of sheep's wool marks a distinct departure within Robinson's practice, signalling a more considered approach to material selection in which questions of provenance, sustainability and sculptural function converge. Sourced locally, the wool operates as both substance and connective material, linking the work to rural ecologies, labour and land-based production.

Situated within contemporary abstraction, the work considers how material reuse and local resources can shape painterly processes. Painting is approached as a materially constructed object in which structure, surface and volume articulate relationships between material, place and lived experience.

Installed within a large-scale international open-call exhibition at Messums West, bringing together 38 artists engaging contemporary painting in relation to ecology, place and sustainability, Learmount situates expanded painting within broader dialogues surrounding environmental change and material practice.