Saturday June 8: Screening 8pm

robbinschilds: I came here on my own 

SCREENING - 8PM

I came here on my own is robbinschilds’ current video and performance work. The diptych video, depicts two simultaneous, mirrored but separate journeys. The characters begin atop snowy alpine peaks and through choreographed and edited sequences descend into lower temperate lands.  Robbins' character shows one journey, Childs’ the other; Their respective pathways are filmed as mirror images of one another yet each remains alone in her solo experience. The work including live performance and a double diptych video installation premiered at Art in General in September 2012 as part of their New Commisions program. robbinschilds received generous funding from Art Matters and the MAP Fund in support of the filming, editing and live development of I came here on my own. 

While questioning gender, landscape and national identity during a 2009 residency robbinschilds encountered New Zealand’s archetypal ‘Man Alone’ trope. The ‘Man Alone’, leaving behind his former home and culture, experiences estrangement in his new land and appears as a recurring theme in NZ’s 

literature and art over the last century. The artists intend to reframe the ‘Man Alone’ concept from a female focused perspective with the depiction of two simultaneous but individual experiences of “Woman Alone”. In this feminist reworking, robbinschilds subverts such archetypal “male” characteristics as man in nature, the lone traveler and the questing hero. I came here on my own is robbinschilds’ current video and performance work.