Sol Robbins

'Only in America'

Sol Robbins, radical American illustrator, has spent his working life concentrating on social and political subjects.

In collaboration with the School of Health and Social Care and the European Illustration Collection based in the University of Lincoln in Hull, this body of work titled 'Urban and Issues', has been reassembled and sent over from America on loan for exhibition during April and May 2004.

Sol Robbins will be visiting Hull on Tuesday 4 May when he will be talking about his work in the Saville Lecture Theatre at 5.30 pm. This will be followed by a reception in the EICH Gallery.

Sol Robbins' America is not the high profile corporate world of skyscrapers and global marketing—the adman's power dream—rather it is the uncomfortable social interface which maps the paradox of its effects. Downtown streets bear the scars, and the people the stresses, of economic systems in play.

Each image, assembled from fragments, addresses the consequences of chasing the 'American Dream'. Sol Robbins creates strange and 'foreign' places for us to roam through—different landscapes of doorways, alleys and oppressive streets. These images have the power to draw us in and in so doing, perhaps, render our own streets 'foreign' for a while.

'Only in America' says volumes about the contradictions we also strive to reconcile. The sick and the old lacking voices and the recognition and dignity they deserve—a world where goods and lives are traded in an endless struggle.

Images like these that make us think are not so plentiful and we are privileged to see these original works on show in Hull from April 5–4 June 2004 after which they will return to the USA.

To see more of Sol Robbins' work, visit his website: www.criticaleye.org

Kathie Jenkins EICH 05/05/04