Robyn Bardas’s practice is rooted in connectedness and the sublime in nature. Her long contemporary landscapes of the last ten years now give way to classical focused representational studies.  

In 2025 she returned from a month at the Barcelona Academy of Art learning classical sculpture and painting (part of an ongoing study). Looking to continue the process, the horse skull in her studio provided a perfectly still model. The living horses became moving models, while Linda Kohanov’s book The Tao of Equus brought the Horse Ancestors into the room. 

"I’m connecting the clay in my hands to a feeling from the horses of knowingness, old intelligence, kindness and inter-survival. The horses stand close, examining my hair, checking if the clay is edible, snoring.  We are grateful for the shade together."

‘Interspecific information’ is where a species learns from the physical cues, language and senses of another species.  In this work, the horse is presented as the other that we learn from.  

Bone is Bone is a new show at Te Atamira of sculpture, video and words. It is about connection, and includes excerpts from a new book, a classical drawing class, and a podcast collab. 

Robyn lives and works in Hāwea Flat.

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Bone is Bone

Bone is bone

It’s like fire, it’s old.

Ephemeral and continuous.

We have bones here,

buried in our paddocks.

Capped by threads of earth 

and mycelium and grass and poo, 

which we sink into our gardens 

with biochar from our fires

to grow food. 

That oldness though.

Comes through our noses

our hands our breath

when we lean into the living.

Those horses connect us.

To ourselves and to them.

We love each other.

We are gentle and curious. 

They teach us stuff

that we don’t even know we’re learning.

                                                           Robyn Bardas 2026 

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Image: Bone is bone. Robyn Bardas 2026. Hand-built ceramic. 440 x 200mm