Robert Bridgewater’s practice is characterised by conceptual agility, formal inventiveness, slowness and a weaving together of various branches of knowledge and poetic association. Concerned with the energy of form in relation to the space in which it interacts, his work shares the minimalist interest in structural formality, geometry, seriality and truth to materials while reflecting on the natural environment and phenomena. He presents us with a reasoned universe, but one which avoids the restrictive logic that defines the man-made and natural worlds in oppositional terms. An openness to natural forms and celebration of the possibilities inherent in the material suffuse his work with organic and sensuous references.
Bridgewater’s vocabulary of form and motif allude to the patterns, rhythms and processes of ritual and nature to encompass a myriad of associations from the secular to the sacred. The works recall primal totems and monumental columns where history is wound around the object, displaced and devotional objects, sea creatures and seed pods, the movements of water and wind, archaic instruments, ancient temples, features of the landscape, late Baroque and Rococo architectures, and the body. Bringing together oppositional elements and fusing references to past, present and future enables Bridgewater to map a particular hybrid territory - creating a morphology of space in which form, process, material and reference converge.
Martina Copley, from 'The Architecture of Skin', Robert Bridgewater, exhibition catalogue, Niagara Publishing, 2000.