Robert Jacks

Jacks studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology before travelling widely, and his years abroad brought him into contact with international currents in contemporary art that he absorbed and transformed in entirely his own way. His practice encompassed painting, works on paper, printmaking, and writing — always with the same quality of sustained, unhurried attention and a refusal to separate the intellectual from the sensory.

His prints produced in collaboration with Fred Genis at the Kenthurst studio span the mid-1980s through to 1989 — Lampshade, Cactus, Temple Gate, Kiss, Seven Steps to Heaven, the small series of nine lithographs, and the Sydney Harbour series of four. The range of subjects is characteristic — the domestic and the monumental, the intimate and the expansive, sitting comfortably side by side. Each work carries the same quality of careful, considered looking that defines his practice at its best.

Robert Jacks died in Melbourne in 2014. His work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and major collections internationally.