Fiona Robertson

Name

Fiona Robertson

Job title

Lecturer

Email

F.Robertson@gsa.ac.uk

Biography

Fiona Robertson's research and work are centrally concerned with the uses of memory, both in the formation of identity (collective and personal) and the way art, repurposing memory, can subvert and reimagine identity in turn. Her work could be seen as following a lineage of artists who challenged artistic and political norms through the primitive, the childish and the surreal - in particular, Dada and Expressionism. Working across drawing, experimental film, painting and sculpture, Fiona reworks techniques from different eras and genres of art; like oil portraiture or the tropes of early silent cinema. Thematically, these methods are coupled with the use of humour, folklore, symbolism and the reworking of old or broken forms to create spaces both drawn out of time and estranged from it. As Julia Kristeva has noted, the modern age is one where history - and so memory - is both entirely absent and completely present; available in a constant stream at the push of a button and dislocated from our technologically-mediated lives entirely. As well as looking back to a past historical moment the work is in this sense intervening into a contemporary crisis of memory, identity and time.

Fiona's work has been selected for international film competitions at acclaimed festivals such as Oberhausen and Go Short. She also exhibits locally - most recently ‘The cook, the cupboard and Joan of Arc’ was shown at the RSA in Edinburgh. She active in the local arts community and has curated exhibitions and events (see beggars teeth.com). Her site-specific sculpture 'Green Man' is located in Glasgow's Necropolis. Fiona regularly collaborates with, and is commissioned by, performance and theatre makers. In 2017, her site-specific sculpture and film 'Bad Sheep' was screened as part of a touring performance promenade.