Robin Eley was born in 1978 in London, England, and his family migrated to Australia in 1981. He completed his secondary education there, and then moved to the United States in 1997 to attend Westmont College. He captained the basketball team and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art in 2001.
His solo exhibitions include Loss/Less (2017) and Prism (2014) in Los Angeles, and Idolatry (2013) and Singularity (2012) in Australia. His group exhibitions include In the Flesh (2014) at the National Portrait Gallery in Australia, and 21st Century Hyperrealism at the Daejeon Museum of Art in South Korea. He has also been a finalist in numerous Australian art prizes.
His hyper-realistic oil paintings are so detailed they are often mistaken for photographs. He spends around 5 weeks on a painting, working about 90 hours a week. He explores the perception of isolation in the modern world, using plastic wrap as a medium since it is something you can see through, but not feel through.
“Idolatry explores societal relationships with material items and aims to expose our frantic devotion to things, which has developed into something of a religious experience.”
His process is lengthy and complex, including numerous sketches, photographing his subject, and arranging photo elements on the computer before painting. In 2014 he received the judges award for curated artists at the Fort Wayne Realism Biennial. He was also runner up in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2010 and highly commended in 2011.
His self-portrait titled “Bibliography” is painted on a geometrical arrangement of 13 different shapes, each a custom-bound book. The books were carefully selected for their significance to either Australian or Chinese culture. Eley currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California.
Q: What defines Robin Eley’s artistic style?
A: His hyper-realistic oil paintings, which are so detailed they are often mistaken for photographs. He explores themes of isolation and materialism, often wrapping his subjects in plastic to create a barrier between the viewer and the subject. His work is technically masterful and conceptually thought-provoking.