Exhibition dates: 10 November – 15 December 2018
Private View: Thursday 8 November 2018, 6-9pm
Private View: Thursday 8 November 2018, 6-9pm
For her solo exhibition at PAPER, Rosanne Robertson presents two new series of small and intimate drawings. These works on paper, Slipping and Suspended, are distinct from each other in terms of representational and abstract form, yet both assert the boundaries of the body as structure. Suspended pins abstract and unfolding imagined forms via strings, nerves and wires- each titled by adding an object to the term suspended form. Slipping, in contrast, pins the representational body, caught in a moment, against the psychological space of the black background.
Boundaries of the body and mind as it occupies, ingests, and resists its environment, is explored with appendages and imagined shapes spilling from the body. The body exposes and withstands trauma, violence and opposes conventional power structures related to gender and sexuality. Female identified sexuality and Queerness is handled outside of the realms that have oppressed it as a fetishized commodity. Apparent Femininities and masculinities are joined in a fluid structure without boundaries. The scale of these drawings pulls the viewer into an intimate space of both vulnerability and unapologetic power.
Boundaries of the body and mind as it occupies, ingests, and resists its environment, is explored with appendages and imagined shapes spilling from the body. The body exposes and withstands trauma, violence and opposes conventional power structures related to gender and sexuality. Female identified sexuality and Queerness is handled outside of the realms that have oppressed it as a fetishized commodity. Apparent Femininities and masculinities are joined in a fluid structure without boundaries. The scale of these drawings pulls the viewer into an intimate space of both vulnerability and unapologetic power.
This exhibition of new drawings is informed by an extensive period of performative body art in which Robertson has interrogated her own body as structure, instrument, and object in relation to assembled sculptural works. In this exhibition, drawing is presented as a political space in which to intimately explore ourselves and the human body -- in particular the female identified and Queer body. Robertson believes there is power in unfolding -- in revealing and stripping back distrusting ways we have built around ourselves.
Standing
Charcoal, oil pastel and clay dust on paper
50 x 40cm
2018
Slipping
Charcoal, chalk and graphite on paper
70 x 60cm
2018
Falling
Charcoal and graphite on paper
120 x 150cm
2018
Suspended Form with knuckles
Ink and graphite on paper
50 x 40cm
2018
Suspended Form with stocking
Ink and graphite on paper
50 x 40cm
2018
Suspended Bodies #3
Oil Pastel & Graphite on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017
Suspended Bodies #4
Oil Pastel & Graphite on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017
Suspended Bodies #1
Oil Pastel & Graphite on Paper
30 x 42cm
2017
Installation Views
