Freddie Robins
Credits: Freddie Robins

Freddie Robins

Freddie Robins’ practice crosses definable categories of art, craft and design. She combines these elements elegantly, and with playful wit subverts meaning and making, fusing a melting-pot of approaches to ‘craft’.

She uses knitting to explore pertinent contemporary issues of the domestic, gender and the human condition, as well as the cultural preconceptions surrounding knitting as craft. Her work aims to disrupt the notion of the medium as passive and benign. Her pieces often incorporate both humour and fear. There is also a display of almost obsessive perfectionism in the quality of each piece’s hand-made finish.

Freddie Robins’ work is in several private and public collections, including the Government Art Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, Crafts Council, Nottingham Castle Museum, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland and Kode, Bergen, Norway. She has exhibited internationally, including most recently, History in the Making: stories of materials and makers, 2000 BC – Now, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK; If Not Now, When? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain, 1960 – 2022, Hepworth Wakefield and Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; I Put a Spell on You – New Magic and Mysticism, Art Exchange, University of Essex, Colchester, UK; Creature Comforts, JGM Gallery, London, UK; Kette und Schuss, Mönchengladbach, Germany; CC binder, Puurs-Sint-Amands, Puurs, Belgium; and We are Commoners: Creative Acts of Commoning, a Craftspace national touring exhibition. 

Currently Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art, Robins is the 2025 Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitor in the Visual Arts Program, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR. She lives and works in Essex, UK and London, UK.

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