Robert Ashton (1950) is an Australian photographer and photojournalist.
Early life and education
Robert Ashton was born on August 11, 1950, in Melbourne. He studied Photography at Prahran College 1969-71 and graduated with a Diploma of Visual Arts and Design.
Career
In the early 1970s, Robert Ashton shared house with Carol Jerrems and Ian Macrae in Mozart Street, St Kilda, their artist associates being Ingeborg Tyssen, Paul Cox and Bill Heimerman, and Ashton's cousin Rennie Ellis with whom he shared a studio in Greville Street, Prahran. From 1974 to 1981, Ashton was assistant director at Ellis's Brummels Gallery in Toorak Road, South Yarra, where he also exhibited.
Photography curator Judy Annear notes that;
His subject matter includes urban indigenous, life and incidents in inner suburbia in Melbourne, particularly Fitzroy. Writer and musician Mark Gillespie, who had become involved in a new publishing venture, Outback Press, with Fred Milgrom Colin Talbot and Morry Schwartz, commissioned Ashton for the book Into the Hollow Mountain. Its images, of "kids on the prowl, the old Salvo street bands, the Koorie clans, the card joint kaphenois", were first shown at Brummels in a exhibition of that title in 1974, and when re-exhibited forty years later at Colour Factory, "serve as a rare documentation of day-to-day Melbourne and glimpse into an era that, while not actually all that distant, is most definitely a thing of the past."
Ashton has published several other books, of portraits and close-up, abstracted landscape, and exhibited widely in Australia. His photograph Bernard Diving featured in the 1988 exhibition, and on the cover its catalogue, The Thousand Mile Stare, a survey of Australian photography published by the Victorian Centre for Photography.
In pursuing the best quality output for his imagery, Ashton adopted, and currently uses, hand-built large format cameras and advanced printing techniques including photogravure and the Collodion process.
He lives on Victoria's Surf Coast, and imagery of the ocean and landscape is a consistent interest.
Exhibitions
Solo
1973 Faces and Places, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne
1974 Into the Hollow Mountains: A Portrait of Fitzroy, Brummels Gallery
1976 Between Light and Dark, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
1976 Between Light and Dark, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne
1979 Adventures in Paradise? Church Street Photographic Centre, Melbourne
1987 Adventures in Paradise?, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. 1990 Photogravure Images, United Artists Gallery, Melbourne. 1993 What are you Doing? What are you Saying?, Luba Bilu Gallery, Melbourne 2000 Hidden Things, Qdos Gallery, Lorne 2001 Life Sanctuary, Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne 2003 Different Dreams-Same Reality, Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne 2005 Evidence, Little Malop Gallery, Geelong 2006 Visual Instinct, Libby Edwards Gallery - Melbourne 2007 Recognition, Pigment Gallery, Prague 2009 Snapshots from the edge, Qdos Gallery, Lorne 2009 Photographs from the edge, Monash Gallery of Art 2012 Postmortem, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne 2013 Interior/Exterior, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne 2014 Into The Hollow Mountains, Colour Factory Gallery, Melbourne 2014 Interior/Exterior + Postmortem gravures, Black Eye Gallery, Sydney 2015 Thin Air, Qdos Gallery, Lorne 2015, 6 Aug - 29 Aug; Thin Air, Colour Factory Gallery, 409-429 Gore St, Fitzroy 2021, 3–25 Apr, Bush Theatre, Qdos Gallery, Lorne
Group
1982 Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane. 1988 The Thousand Mile Stare, Victorian Centre for Photography 1988 Artery Gallery, Geelong. 1990 Qdos Gallery, Lorne. 1990 1991 Special . . . It's Been Used Before, Luba Bilu Gallery. 1991 Survey - A Regional Review, Geelong Art Gallery. 1998 Waterproof, Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon Portugal. 2003 Australian Photographic Portrait Prize, Art Gallery of NSW. 2007 Ulrich and Schubert Photography award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery 2007 Bowness Photography prize, Monash Gallery of Art. 2010 Bowness Photography prize 2010, Monash Gallery of Art. 2011 Ulrich and Schubert Photography award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery. 2020, 31 October 2020 – 7 February 2021 Bowness Photography prize 2020, Monash Gallery of Art.