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Tom Rowland presents recent paintings by Carole Robb (1943) in an exhibition at GPS Gallery in Soho, London, and the artist’s first exhibition in the UK since her solo exhibition at The South London Gallery in 1983. Robb has exhibited extensively in New York since that time. She was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland and studied at Glasgow School of Art.

The exhibition takes its name from Robb’s large diptych painting of 2023, where we see depicted a dark and watery Venice, flooded with mysterious shadow and reflection. The title, Stato da Màr refers to ‘The State of the Sea’, which is the historical name given to the Republic of Venice’s maritime and oversees possessions from around 1000 to 1797.  In the context of modern day climate change and rising sea levels, the present condition of the sea becomes topical.

For Robb the paintings are the result of observations made in Venice during her time spent there from 2021, when she was looking for a sense of place and for a way to paint water as form. Robb works from observation and invention and she began by looking at Venetian women and their dogs, crossing the Grand Canal in gondolas. She thought she was witness to the Aqua Alta (the annual flooding of the city) before realising it was out of season. She was an observer of rising water levels and climate change.

Giovanni Antonio Canal, Canaletto, (1697) from the Venetian School, was an observer too. His detailed paintings of the city made in the C17th record water levels at the time by the lines of algae at the bases of the Venetian buildings he painted, inadvertently illustrating that the water levels have risen since that time. Canaletto also painted Capricci - imagined fantasies of the city’s architecture. Robb’s paintings are more akin to this in spirit, figures are painted within the illusive architectural landscape of Venice and become fantasies beyond the point her own observation.

A film of Carole Rob in conversation with Alexis Nanavaty, curator and PhD student at the Courtauld Institute, is commissioned  for the exhibition. Alexis Nanavaty’s research focuses on 16th century Italian art and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.