“Beatrice”
(Installation using silk, thread, felt, steel, brass, gold-plated copper, foam, cardboard, pins, fixings and is part of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection).

Robinson’s installation Beatrice, the SALA Festival hero image, defies categorisation. Is it a plant, an animal or a fantastical beast?

The inspiration for Beatrice combines two allegorical figures. The first is the mythic Greek sea monster Scylla. Having once been a beautiful sea nymph, Scylla was transformed into a treacherous sea monster by bathing in poisoned waters. With writhing tentacles, a female torso and a ring of barking dogs at her waist, Scylla is described as a chimera – a creature combining two or more parts of an animal. The second figure is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, written in 1844. Rappaccini, the father of a girl named Beatrice, was a scientist whose botanical experiments were barbaric and seen to contradict the natural order of God. This meant Rappaccini had tampered with nature. He had created a garden full of deadly plants. Beatrice grew up tending the poisonous jewel-like purple flowers of her father’s garden, making her resistant yet toxic to others. For Robinson, the figures of Scylla and Hawthorne’s Beatrice are twinned; both women are the making of a malicious creator and both are the embodiment of death.
Robinson’s Beatrice is a chimera of its own. The writhing tentacles of Scylla meet the poisonous purple plants of Rappacini’s garden. Robinson becomes a Rappaccini of sorts, she is the creator of a new species, splicing together a hybrid creature that defies the rules of nature.