Ro Robertson

The Island
2020
Charcoal, gouache, and graphite drawing
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society through the Rapid Response Fund, 2020.

Ro Robertson’s practice spans sculpture, photography, drawing, and performance, through which they explore the boundaries of the human body and its environment.

The Island is a large charcoal, gouache, and graphite drawing depicting a bodily island, partly submerged. It was made during Robertson’s tenure at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall. Here, Robertson began producing drawings using the surrealist technique of automatism to represent their memories, dreams, bodily sensations, and physical experiences of climbing and swimming around Godrevy Point, St Ives. Of this process, they have said: ‘I trust in my deeper psyche which is less tainted by the hostile man-made binary structures I have bent myself around.’

This work forms part of a series called Packing comprising of three works, all of which are in the Wakefield Permanent Art Collection.