Catriona Robertson is a Scottish/British artist living in London and graduated from the Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture in 2019. Her work ‘Gigantic Pile’ currently has a show Everyday Monuments at the Saatchi Gallery in London. In 2023 she was nominated for the Women of the Year, in 2022 she was a Winner of the Gilbert Bayes Award, at the Royal Society of Sculptors. In 2021 she won second prize at the Robert Walters Uk New Artist of the Year Award supported by the Saatchi gallery.
1 - Could you explain your practice? Only you know why you do what you do.
I make installations, and performative works with discarded materials as well as creating objects from raw materials that reflect on the built environment and interconnectedness between the urban and natural landscapes.
I’ve always been drawn to sculpture and the process of making itself is integral to my work. I’ve got a fascination with concrete as a ubiquitous material, an imposter stone-like element which surrounds us, supports us; shelters us, fills gaps and takes on minuscule and monumental forms. I observe how nature comes back through the cracks of concrete and we as humans are constantly at odds with nature. I use architectural elements which I am casting and embed within my work, as symbols of future excavation sites. The repeat casting process and continual breakage, filling, and layering create an interstice between the recognisable ‘original’ object and the final object
I find making on this scale creates a sense of awareness and imbalance at the same time, or a somewhat argumentative relationship ness with the space which differentiates them from other objects in the world and makes you think about how to interact with them.
There’s an element of performativity too, where it looks like it’s growing out of the wall or ground, or perhaps there’s a feeling it’s going to topple over. It feels as though it’s is a constant state of rehearsal. It’s too big for my studio and so I deconstruct it and reconstruct it again and again, and when it arrives in the exhibition space and the audience arrives the performance happens. It’s also a sense of creating something larger than myself or that appears solid and weighty and monumental in scale but can disappear in an instant. My sculptures are also performative, as in either they have undergone a process or I have to physically build them in the space. They burrow and bury themselves, digging into the ground and into the ceiling. Tunneling through in-between spaces, they re-emerge with an element of collapse and precarity.
I’m working on a scale that is sometimes out of my control, and that feels quite uncertain at times. I often take risks and follow my gut feeling. Sometimes you just know and sometimes it fails, but I embrace it all.
I use re-claimed and recycled materials to reflect on our throw-away culture, where the bedrock beneath the future city will be made up of detritus and past human relics rapidly compressed to form a new transient sedimentary layer in deep time. I often imagine a post-human future in which nature will come back through the cracks as the concrete breaks down and where gargantuan worm-like creatures have adapted to digest these synthetic materials. I create other fragments and architectural forms, that often respond to a space or place. I’m fascinated by both architecture in the city, and nature, and often imagine a rewilding of the city.
2 - Is art relevant today?
Art has always been relevant and always will be. It has the power to express what words may not always be able to, it’s communication. I think at the moment I’ve seen a lot of art that contemplates our changing and fragile state, be that ecological, political, questioning ourselves, broken systems, contemplating the post-human and non-human future. Art also turns to the past in a search for contemplation of where we are now, asking what can we learn from our ancestors.
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us, we want to know what art you don’t like and which influences you?
I’m not sure what I don’t like specifically, more so if a message doesn’t reach me. I think all art is worth considering but it speaks to each of us in different ways. I suppose I don’t like it when it’s too easy to install, but that’s more jealousy over my own intensive install! Or when it’s too expensive. I am also less interested in when the artist hasn’t made it themselves, or if they as I am a maker and I always have a hand in that and it’s important to me.
I’m really influenced by Phyllida Barlow. I love her work and the way she talks about sculptural language, construction, and deconstruction in her work through collapse and re-construction. Her ambition of scale and monumentality is just jaw-dropping and her ability to make something lumpy appear like a floating concrete cloud. Everything she made had both an element of chaos and elegance about it, you were never sure which way it was going to fall. I often felt they might just get up and start walking out of the room.
4- If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
Keep going ! Don’t give up and always keep learning. Keep making or drawing and reading even if it’s small, and keep going to exhibitions. I didn’t get a studio straight away after I graduated with my BA because I couldn’t afford it at the time, so there was a period where I wasn’t making any work and I almost stopped. That created a gap for me between my BA and MA. However, working at various jobs did give me experiences that have shaped my practice and skill set and then I started to do residencies which gave me the time to focus on working full time and saving money. I think I am lacking in digital skills but that’s also not how I work, I’d tell myself to learn more of that too.
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
Be a full-time artist. It’s a constant juggle at the moment between sustaining my practice and earning a living to survive in London, hope to have figured it out by then! It would be really great to have my sculpture Gigantic Pile outside somewhere permanently.
And …. I’d love to show at the Venice Bienalle ! You never know what’s around the corner.
An image of your work, the title and year
‘Gigantic Pile’ 2024 currently on show at Everyday Monuments at the Saatchi Gallery