Wellfleet Adult Community Center
Monthly exhibit of Outer Cape Contemporary Artists
April - Sian Robertson
Curated by Robert Rindler
Artist Reception: April 6, 3-5 pm
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I have always been drawn to maps, and one of my favorite things about using them to create art is that they retain the inherent history of the person who owned them before me - a history I am rarely privy to yet I feel becomes part of the work I create. I often imagine maps and atlases rolling off the printing press - household names like Hammond, AAA, Rand McNally, (or OrdInance Survey from the UK, where I grew up). And somehow one of the tens of thousands of copies of that particular edition, maybe decades (once or twice even a century) after it was printed, finds its way to me. The paper is worn at the folds, yellowed at the edges, cities are circled, routes are highlighted. Coffee spills, phone numbers, and directional notes all speak to its earlier life as a functional object in someone else’s hands. Through these maps I experience histories small and large as I vicariously travel other people's vacations, and witness the downfall of empires as borders move and country names change.
I like to say that a beautiful map makes my heart race and my hand reach for my X-acto knife. And through the cutting and tearing, the layering and pasting, the rolling and folding of that one atlas or single fold out map, I too become part of its history.
ARTIST’S BIO
Sian Robertson grew up in South West Wales, in the UK and moved to America in 1992. After seven years in San Francisco she settled on Cape Cod, where her art career began.
Robertson has never received any formal art training but has been cutting and pasting, amongst many other creative pursuits, since she was a child. Since 2015 she has had solo shows almost annually in galleries in Provincetown, MA, as well as being part of many juried and group shows in galleries and arts institutions in Provincetown, across Cape Cod, and in Boston. In 2024 she was invited by Twenty Summers to create her first ever site-specific installation, Impermanence, at the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, MA.
Robertson has received several awards for her work, and has been featured in local and national publications including Uppercase Magazine, the Provincetown Banner, and the Provincetown Independent. She teaches classes at the Provincetown Art Association.