(1965 - )
Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, Freddie Robins studied constructed textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic and the RCA, graduating in 1989. On graduation she established Tait & Style, a design company specialising in embroidered, knitted and needle-punched fabrics, with fellow RCA graduate Ingrid Tait, designing fashion and furnishing fabrics and accessories for eight years. Changing the focus of her practice in 1997 to conceptually-led knitted textile artworks, she received a Crafts Council Setting Up Award in 1998. In 2002, she was shortlisted for the ‘Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Textiles’. Her first solo show at Firstsite, Minories Art Gallery, Colchester (2002) toured to the Pier Art Centre, Orkney; with further solo exhibitions at KODE Kunstmuseer in Bergen, Norway (2007); and Contemporary Applied Arts, London (2009). More recently, her work has been included in group shows at M100 Exhibition Centre for Contemporary Art, Odense, Denmark (2018); Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London (2019); and Messums Wiltshire (2019). Robins is Senior Tutor and Reader in Textiles at the Royal College of Art.