Studio Journal | October Issue

 Dear friends,

We're writing this from the studio in Sydney. It's mid-morning, there's a coffee on the table, and the birds have been incredibly chatty this morning, the kind of morning that makes you forget how much there is to do. Life has picked up its pace again, and some days we don't know where to grab hold first.

But we wanted to write to you anyway. For almost two months now, we have been quietly working in the background. Maybe we should have posted more and let you into our little garden a little sooner, but we have been busy planting many seeds and cultivating new ideas. There's a fair bit on the table right now. New sketches, new designs that are starting to take real shape, and a few new artworks underway too.

And speaking of the page, we've also been asking a bigger question. Could the journal become physical? A monthly print you could read with a cup of coffee, art in hand. Everything you get digitally, but with all the goodness of experiencing something in person. Not just a good read, but a way to unwind, to see, and to reset. We'd love to know your thoughts.

The Bloom Capsules are moving along as well, closer now to something you'll actually be able to hold. The questions we're still working through are in the details, the timber we use, how each piece is framed. We've spent more time on the tools than the paintbrush lately, working those details out for every bloom. Ink on paper, the material so many of you have been asking for. It's the part of the work that usually stays behind the curtain, the sketches, the studies, the things we don't often show and always cover up. This time we're letting it stay in bloom, giving it room to be its own thing.

We've wrestled with what these blooms could be. They're always intentional, but we've always known they'd be covered up in the end. Something shifts when you know they'll remain seen instead. The process changes, the material it sits on becomes different. Kurt feels the work no longer sits on canvas, but on something new, on paper.

That same instinct, giving something room to be its own thing, is what pulled us toward garments too. Studio garments are a completely new form for the studio, but something more personal to Kurt. A project that's been really fun to create, something far more relaxed, but something you can take with you day to day.

And Atmosphere is close to being ready to show you all. Refining colour, texture and feel, our samples are on their way. We cannot express how ready we are to bring this new bloom to life, to have you feel the garden in a new way, and this is just the beginning. It's been back and forth with our suppliers on what's possible and what isn't, whether we can bring more than one scent to life, or even three. It feels so close, yet like the change of season, spring hasn't quite sprung yet, and we just need to be patient.

So yes, there are a few things underway, all moving at once, all still slightly unfinished. But we want you to be part of the process and feel them this way, mid-process, before they're polished into something else. So stick around, and read on for the full story on each.

With gratitude,
The Studio

Runways over rugby, every time. That was always the tell.

As a kid, there was nothing like the feeling of watching the top fashion houses show off their new collections. It wasn't just a magical way of seeing art expressed in wearable ways, it was a performance, a world you would step into (well, from a screen) that transported you to another universe. It was so lush, and something would settle in, in a way that was hard to explain at the time.

If it wasn't watching on TV, it was rushing to the shop to see what new runway magazine had dropped, flipping straight to the editorials, studying the designs, poring over the photography, and getting lost in whatever world they'd created, the way other people studied a scoreboard.

Chanel's tweed, that particular architecture of a jacket. Dior's florals, romantic without ever tipping into saccharine. Dolce & Gabbana, all that unapologetic maximalism, colour and print worn like a declaration rather than an accessory. Loewe, bold in the choices nobody else would make, leather folded like origami. We lived for all of it. The construction, the fabric choice, the audacity.

We were watching how the best in the world built something that could move with a body and still feel like art. That love never left, and it was only a matter of time before it found its way into our own world.

ROBERTSONKUR has never claimed to be only a fine art studio. We've said from the start that we sit at the intersection of art, lifestyle and fashion. Art isn't confined to a wall. It takes the form it needs to take. A room can be art. A fragrance can be art. And clothing, cut with the same intention, the same restraint, the same obsession over a single detail, can be art too.

So we made the jump, and started with something anyone who's ever spent real time in a garden already understands. You need the sun, but not all of it. A little shade to work in. Something easy enough to pull on without thinking, practical enough to actually live in, and for Kurt, something he wears almost every day. It may not be the obvious floral design yet, but it sits close to the studio. It's a daily wearable, designed to be used, roughed up, even get dirty, and it carries the core of ROBERTSONKUR, the designs Kurt created almost a decade ago and the garden that's still growing. Not by accident, but all made on purpose.

Soon we'll release the first ROBERTSONKUR Garments, made for exactly that, for the hands in the soil and the walk between the beds, the garden protecting you the way you've spent years protecting it.

Welcome to the Garden Club. The garden, now worn.

Big, breathtaking blooms have always been our thing. Walls you walk into have always been the way. Pieces that make you tilt your head back and stop you in your tracks are what we always wanted.

It's no secret that we love scale, and we always will. But big takes time, and time means few. So this year we sat down and asked how we could express our blooms in a new way. We wanted to create something that spoke loudly but felt intimate and dear, something that sits in the contrast of softness and edge.

So we did it. Meet the Bloom Capsules. Same garden. New expression, and scale.

You don't have to step back to take these in. Instead, you lean in. Each one holds a single expression of a bloom, zoomed in close enough to find what the wide view skips over, the fold of a petal, the shadow caught inside it, the architecture of something opening. It is the garden held, the part of it you'd miss if you were standing too far away.

This is what proximity gives you that distance can't. The detail becomes the subject. The small becomes whole.

They're in the making right now, and soon they'll be held by you. Watch our socials for the drop, and for how you can register your interest.

Our first mini coffee table book, THE MAKING OF ROBERTSONKUR, gathers photos taken by Kurt Robertson on his iPhone or Canon 7D since 2011. Out of the thousands of images stored across fifteen years, Kurt has selected a few hundred, early studio setups, unseen sketches, references that shaped art and life, from lions to art, and all the places life has taken the studio.

Soon, on our website.