2026: Rob McLeish

Gertrude is pleased to announce the release of the 2026 Gertrude Edition, contributed by Gertrude Studio alum Rob McLeish. McLeish participated in the Gertrude Studio Program from 2009-2010, and presented the 2021 River Capital Commission: HEADLESS, an expansive survey of historical sculptural works alongside newly commissioned works, at Gertrude Contemporary. His work addresses ideas of entropy, examined through representation of physical and material fatigue, frequently integrating formal precision through a lens of desire and decay. His practice is widely recognised for its commitment to material experimentation, traversing drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation.

For the 2026 Gertrude Edition, McLeish evolves a direction in his practice forged with his recent solo exhibition SNARES (Neon Parc, 2025), which featured a series of wilted roses cast in bronze, each suspended from and encased within folded stainless steel sculptural armatures. McLeish has developed a series of 50 hand-made sculptural works entwining and fusing mixed metals including cast bronze, stainless steel square bar, laser cut stainless steel sheet, stainless steel chain and bronze welding. While identical in structural form, each work has unique variations, with each of the cast bronze elements taking the form of a different measure of thorny rose stem, different welts of bronze welding, and the colouration of those components varied from the extreme heat exposure of welding.

Materially, the edition gestures to mid-century brutalist sculpture, while formally, the work suggests a crucifix-like form, perhaps intended less as a devotional gesture, and more as a means to signify suffering and oblation. The cast bronze measure of the thorny rose stem may suggest a love that has passed yet remains immortalised. What is more difficult to ascertain with any certainty, is whether it is a certain love story that is being exalted, or the heartbreak of its conclusion captured in perpetuity.

The inherent ambiguity of Ligature is the presentation of a pledge to romanticism, while gesturing to the possibility of pain. This is the delicate line that the work holds. The folded metal elements, suggesting the petals of a rose, are rendered emotionally cold in sharp, industrial, unrelenting stainless steel, and the hardened barbs of the stem heighten an atmosphere of danger. Formally, Ligature is a work of some elegance, composed with an astute awareness of how axes collaborate to form a balanced composition. Materially, alchemical potentiality is suggested through the binding of different metals.

Selected solo exhibitions include: SNARES, Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne (2025); Air Like Wine (with Bill Saylor), Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne (2023); 2021 River Capital Commission: HEADLESS, Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm Melbourne; Distortions, Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne (2021); Correction Flute(s), Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne; Thanks Criticism!, Kansas Gallery, New York, USA (2016); Lapsink, Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne (2013); Art Contemporary Los Angeles Art Fair, Neon Parc, Los Angeles, USA (2013); Concept Fatigue, DB Projects, Sydney (2012); Gravity Stole My Eyelid, Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne (2011); Keep Art Evil, Monash University, Naarm Melbourne (2010); NADA Art Fair, Neon Parc, Miami, USA (2010); Pissing in the Infinity Pool, Ocular Lab, Naarm Melbourne (2009); Afterparty, West Space, Naarm Melbourne (2008); and Step Into The Light, TCB, Naarm Melbourne (2007).

Selected recent group exhibitions include: Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, Villa Alba Museum, Naarm Melbourne (2024); 2018 TarraWarra Biennial: From Will to Form, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville (2018); Versus Rodin: Bodies Across Space and Time, Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarndanya Adelaide (2017); Vitreous Humour, Kansas Gallery, New York, USA (2016); An Imprecise Science, Artspace, Sydney (2015); Sequester, Australian Embassy, Washington DC, USA (2014); Basil Sellers Art Prize, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne (2014); Reinventing the Wheel: The Readymade Century, Monash University Museum of Art, Naarm Melbourne (2013); Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Parallel Collisions, Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarndanya Adelaide (2012); and Life.Death.Thereafter, Silvershot, Naarm Melbourne (2008). 

Rob McLeish is represented by Neon Parc, Naarm Melbourne.