Ro Robertson

Ro Robertson has generously produced Porth, 2024, a limited edition artwork on the occasion of Modern Thresholds: Ro Robertson, a site-responsive display of drawing and sculpture on view at Tate St Ives until December 2025.

For Porth, 2024, Robertson used the same techniques as when making the Porth works on paper which are presented as part of Interlude within the Modern Thresholds display at Tate St Ives. Sheets of transparent film were placed on the sand and marks were made following the contours of the beach, incorporating rain drops and sand into the marking process. Robertson uses automatic techniques to draw freely and unconsciously ‘en plein air’, reflecting the ‘improvisation of the sea and the chance compositions it leaves behind’. The drawings resonate with surrealist techniques of automatism and are inspired by the tidal zone of the shoreline, which is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide – in the artist’s words ‘rewriting’ the beach twice a day. The drawings appear in flux and between body and landscape.

Porth, meaning cove or entrance in Cornish, is expanded on in this work with the act of considering Porthmeor beach as a portal and the notion of a body being fluid like a passageway and having bodies of water running through it. In this work the space of the body defined in graphite by loose observations of the rocky headlands becomes a channel in which the sea passes through and pools around.

Each artwork is signed and numbered and comes unframed. Prices of the artwork are liable to change. As a limited edition sells out, prices of the artwork are subject to increase and the price will be clearly indicated.

• Artist Ro Robertson
• Artwork Porth
• Exhibition Modern Thresholds: Ro Robertson
• Dimensions 67.5 x 49 cm
• Material Polymer gravure etching on Somerset white satin 300gsm paper
• Edition Limited edition of 50, signed and numbered on front
• Date of work 2024

Ro Roberston (b. 1984, Sunderland, UK) works site specifically, often outdoors, with a multi-sensory focus on the body in the landscape. Unity between the material of the natural landscape and the body reclaims a space for LGBTQ+ identity against a history of being deemed ‘against nature’. Physical explorations of the natural landscape feed into ‘automatic’ abstract drawings and short mediative video works. Robertson’s large-scale sculptures embed the fluidity of this cyclical practice into rigid and industrial materials such as Corten steel and marine paint, materials that bridge their family heritage of ship building and their sculptural practice.

Selected solo exhibitions include Torsos, Maximillian William, London, UK (2022); Subterrane, Maximillian William, London, UK (2021); Stone (Butch), The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK (2019); Slipping. Suspended, PAPER Gallery, Manchester, UK (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Dreaming of Home at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, US (2023); WINK WINK at Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery, Rossendale, UK (2023); We Are Floating In Space, Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, Newlyn / Penzance, UK (2023); Behind abstract forms, Fragment, New York, US (2023); On Queer Ground, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK (2022) and Into Abstraction, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK (2022).

Selected awards and grants include Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2020); Developing Your Creative Practice, Arts Council England, (2019); Yorkshire Sculpture International, Associate Artist (2019). Their work is in public collections throughout the UK including the British Museum, London, UK, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, UK, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK. Robertson lives and works in West Cornwall.