Robin Shelton is an interdisciplinary artist working through the mediums of jewellery, photography, collage, drawing and the written word. Since graduating from Loughborough College of Art and Design with a first class honours degree in Silversmithing and Jewellery, his career has encompassed making, teaching, exhibiting (nationally and in Europe) and writing two traditionally-published non-fiction books.

His early jewellery work explored the nature of the materials, processes and philosophies presented to him whilst studying. The first year of the course consisted entirely of the instruction of correct and traditional silversmithing and metalworking techniques – piercing, annealing, bending, folding, raising, forging, casting, machining, chasing, threading, drawing, spinning.

Over the decades, using these techniques in new ways with unconventional materials, Robin has refined his style by creating items that he calls ‘the result of a dialogue between me and the objects I make or find.’ His studio is regimentally littered with objets-trouve that have caught his eye over the years: whether from street, beach or forest they assemble themselves, occupying valuable bench space, and murmur; softly clamorous at times – at others rowdy, insistent, shouty. Half-made, abandoned projects from years gone by sometimes holler back, dragging themselves into being while he watches on amazed, amused.

Robin Shelton has collected found objects for as long as he can remember. Over time – sometimes a few glimpsed seconds, many others over years – they form associations between themselves which he attempts to mediate and manifest, using traditional techniques in unusual, diverse ways. By appropriate and judicious intervention in each component of a piece, constructed harmonies are reached; sometimes poetic, often playful.

Materials are varied; tide-smoothed pebbles and glass, marine-grade steel cable and industrial rubber tubing, odd fragments from beaches, pavements or countryside sit alongside a variety of metals, woods and sometimes bone; carved, shaped, bent to will in order to echo or enhance the casual allure of the found – which has itself been modified in some way as a gesture of compromise towards the made, breaking hierarchies.

Consistently blurring and stretching the interstices between form and function, made and found, precious and base, implicit and explicit, object and context, his desire is for his work to encourage others to do the same; to explore the philosophy of life being analogous to art in that both are much more rewarding, educational and entertaining when you take the time to listen as well as speak, and when you ask more questions than you answer.