In the late 70s, I studied Communication Design at the Faculty of Art and Design, North East London Polytechnic (now University of East London). I produced work in a range of media, including photography, tape/slide, video. I had an existing interest in concrete poetry and therefore concentrated that little bit more on graphics and typography, where my lecturers included the book artist Ken Campbell and the photomontage artist Peter Kennard. Related to this design background, the style of my concrete poems is bold, graphic and coherent.

After graduating and teacher training, I worked, in the 1980s, as a lecturer at a further education college in the north of England. It was during this time that I had several works published by Leeds Postcards and on sale at bookshops throughout Britain. This included civil liberties/Official Secret, an artwork in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry at the University of Iowa.

Beginning in the late 70s, I had a long standing friendship with the great sound and typewriter poet Henri Chopin. This included organisation of his performances in the UK during 1990, which also resulted in publishing eight postcards (two by Chopin and six by me) under my Concrete Events imprint. They are now part of several collections, including the British Library, the Tate Library and Archive, and the V&A Museum.

Click on images for larger view:

My Concrete Events cards included Le Bureau and The Sleeping Partner. These were pointers to a direction I took in the late 1990s: extending my concrete poetry into three dimensions with a series of “text installations”. For two consecutive years, I exhibited at Visionfest in Liverpool and in 1999 there was a solo exhibition at Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery. From this time, I am exhibiting images and documentation of An Abstract For All Libraries and three small text/object artworks: Biographical Details; Other Shoes; Comments Book For A Sensitive Artist. This work also reflects the crossover between concrete poetry and Fluxus.

Eugen Gomringer, one of concrete poetry’s most significant figures, saw some of my work when he visited the UK in 2011 and invited me to exhibit at his gallery in Germany during 2014. For this, I prepared exhibition prints using vector software and digital printing.
This, with slight modifications to some and the addition of a few others is the basis of the remaining work I have selected for Bower Ashton Library | CFPR, and include SEA and certainty/doubt.

My concrete poetry engages with a range of messages, both social and personal. I hope they are surprising in achieving an aesthetic that can be, through its capacity for variety, both serious and entertaining.

As a visual artist, I continue to work across different media, recently concentrating on abstract digital artworks and abstract animations. For this exhibition, though, I have extracted items from my work with text. This is also current, since many are newly available as prints through my online shop.

Visit Robert Richardson’s website for more information.

*The nearest car parking for visiting UWE Bower Ashton campus is – public parking meters on main road or at Ashton Court.

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website.