Genevieve Robertson works at the intersection of contemporary art and environmental studies. Her practice is primarily based in drawing and extends to video, installation, collaboration, writing and occasional curation. Robertson’s site-informed work often focusses on ecosystems such as watersheds, old growth forests, wildfire sites and marine shorelines, as well as elemental materials such as carbon and iron. Through this research she explores the origins of primordial matter across geologic time, industrial and settler-colonial impacts on more-than-human beings, and the intelligence and interconnection of the life systems of which we are part. Her practice is guided by an ethic of respect, openness, and curiosity towards the materials, places, people, and other entities she works with. As the climate crisis intensifies, her interest in cross-sectoral bridging between arts and environmental fields of practice is increasing.
Genevieve is informed by a personal and intergenerational history of resource labour in remote forestry camps all over British Columbia. She is of mixed European ancestry and currently lives and works on the traditional and unceded territory of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Confederacy Arrow Lakes and Yaqan Nukiy Lower Kootenay Band peoples with her artist partner and twin toddlers.
Robertson holds a BFA from NSCAD University (Halifax) and an MFA from Emily Carr University (Vancouver). She has been supported through exhibitions, symposia, and residencies internationally, most recently at the Orange County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), the Oceanside Museum of Art (Los Angeles), SBC Gallery (Montréal), The Works on Water Triennial (New York), Sitka Center for Art and Ecology (Oregon), the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), Access Gallery (Vancouver), the Burnaby Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Grand Forks Art Gallery. Her work has been published with the Centre for Alterity Studies (UK), The Capilano Review (BC), The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (ON), The Dark Mountain Project (UK) and Fire Season (BC). It is also featured in Outdoor School (Douglas and McIntyre), Art and Climate Change (Thames and Hudson), and upcoming Ecologies in Practice: Environmentally Engaged Arts in Canada (Wilfrid-Laurier University Press).
She is grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance for their generous support, and to all the individuals, organizations and institutions that have made her work possible.
Contact:
email: genevieve.f.robertson@gmail.com
IG: @genevieve__robertson