Gentle, brilliant and creative: F!NK designer Robert Foster leaves lasting legacy

A tribute

When I first heard that Robert Foster had been killed in a car crash, there was a feeling of shock and disbelief. Perhaps they got it wrong and it was a different Robert Foster and not that gentle, brilliant and creative designer who had invented an icon in Australian art and was one of the brightest stars in the Canberra and national art scene.

Robert Foster trained at the Canberra School of Art in its glory days, where the internationally renowned artists, Ragnar Hansen and Johannes Kuhnen in the Gold and Silver Workshop, introduced him to the traditional skills of hollowware achieving depth and volume in metal. He graduated from the workshop with a BA (Visual) degree in 1985 followed by a postgraduate diploma a year later. He immediately launched into establishing a studio in Canberra and proceeded to exhibit his work in galleries nationally and later internationally.

As an adolescent, Foster made jewellery in his father's shed. "My father was a potter and art school teacher, which led me to play with ceramics from a young age," he said. "However, I was attracted to the qualities of metal, the ability to control it, together with its versatility and precision." In 1993 the Republic restaurant in Canberra commissioned Foster to design three water jugs with a paltry budget of $450. This was his first commission and he was determined not to let it go. He recalled, "I made a rudimentary pressing tool to form part of the shape. There wasn't anything sketched out. I could see the form in my head. Each jug requires three separate pressing stages in its creation before the bottom is welded on."

This was to become his iconic F!NK Water Jug and today the brightly coloured anodized hollowware aluminium jug, with its sloping spout, is one of the most recognisable examples of contemporary Australian design. It is displayed in collections throughout the world, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, the Royal College of Art, London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Alessi Museum, Milan and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was the birth of F!NK + Co, a design studio workshop located in Queanbeyan that not only produced Foster's work, but also that of emerging designers whom he has mentored. Collaboration was in his blood and Foster was happy to work with other artists and across mediums. Intrinsic to his nature was to make it happen, for himself, for his friends and collaborators and for Australian design.

The philosophy of F!NK + Co was to challenge the idea "that functional is necessarily boring, and that useful and visually exciting are mutually exclusive. While embracing and reinventing the urban and utilitarian, F!NK is shamelessly unafraid of running with quirkiness and frivolity that captures the heart and imagination." Although Foster was commissioned to design work for leading international designers, including Alessi in Italy and Ingo Maurer in Germany, he did not settle in greener pastures abroad, but was committed to change the nature of Australian design. His designs in their breadth, sense of space and in their daring use of colour maintained an Australian accent.

Together with his passion for metal, Foster was also fascinated with lights and was working with them at least as far back as 1997. He was commissioned to create a monumental work to mark the 10th anniversary of the ActewAGL building in Civic in central Canberra in 2010 and created The Journey, which was awarded the 2011 ACT Architecture Award for Lighting and the Australian New Zealand Lighting Design IES Award of Excellence. Located in the foyer of the building, the 37 heat-moulded tusk-shaped forms are lit with thousands of embedded LED lights that constantly change colour. This Ossolites sculpture at ActewAGL House has become a landmark in the Canberra public art scene and is popular with locals as well as tourists.

Playful, challenging, cheeky and engaging are some of the properties of Foster's art, while at the same time the pieces are beautifully crafted and functional for their intended purpose. In an interview in 2010 Foster was asked what he wanted to achieve for F!NK in the following 10 years. He said: "There are lots of dreams I have for F!NK – doing things beyond object production like big commissions. The notion of Fink is something that goes against the grain and offers a different perspective, that's always been the idea behind it. Something that is not mainstream. This makes it difficult as most big and successful companies take the bread and butter line … and that's what makes the money. For us, that's the jug. The jug allowed so much of this to happen really because of its success. In 10 years, we want to still be surviving and to be relevant."

Tragically the creator of F!NK has had his life cut short at the age of 53, but his ideas and his creative genius will outlive their creator. The death of Foster is a major blow for Australian art in general and for creative design in particular.

Robert Foster leaves behind his wife Gretel and their two young and very lovely daughters, Mischa and Ineska.