Ro Robertson (b. 1984) is an artist based in West Cornwall. Their assembled sculptural works are formed through a creative process of performance with the body, sounds and found objects. Through their practice Robertson sees Queerness as disruption, considered via assembled sculpture and against the idea of the totalitarian single ‘sculptural object’.
Robertson’s body of work, Stone Butch, was on display as a contemporary intervention within The Hepworth Wakefield’s display of work by Barbara Hepworth in gallery 3 throughout Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019.
From January to June 2020 Robertson was a studio holder at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, where they created a new body of work. Comprising a sculpture, video and a large-scale drawing, Packing looks at the terrain of the Queer body in the seascape – its caves, openings and overspills – and explores ideas of masculinity, femininity and gender expression. Robertson articulates connections between their own body and the rhythms and forms of the landscape as transcending ‘a marginalised Queer history based on colonial and western homophobic and transphobic ideas of being deemed “against nature”’.
This new body of work was acquired by The Hepworth Wakefield through the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund.
Yorkshire Sculpture International has an extensive engagement programme, spanning education, community collaborations and artist support.
We explore sculpture with people of all ages, connecting them with the materials and processes used in making sculpture today and showing how sculpture can be found all around us. We are currently working with a group of 25 artists across Yorkshire as part of our 2022 Sculpture Network.
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