ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a self-taught artist originally from the UK, now living in North Truro on Cape Cod.
While I work in a variety of media - collage, assemblage, altered books - my primary source material is almost always used maps and atlases. I create three-dimensional art from maps, which themselves are a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world. When I select maps to use in my work I’m driven almost entirely by the aesthetics of the colors and shapes within them. I ‘excavate’ the maps - hand cutting away specific areas, which then heightens the focus on others. With spaces between the roads of a map removed, the viewer is able to peer deep into the mass of tangled layers of streets, perhaps a symbol of the messiness of interconnected lives. There is both a sense of loss, of the absence of what has been removed, and a sense of resilience and endurance, as the roads remain intact within the fragile structure of the now lace-like pages.
Maps are of particular interest to me - they are beautiful to look at, they represent areas lived in and places still to visit, and I have incredibly fond memories of learning to map read when I was very young. Now, as an adult, and living on a different continent from where I grew up, maps make the world seem smaller and give me a physical and emotional connection to another time and place.
One of my favorite things about using maps 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 Ordnance 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 peoples’ 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.
Photo: Katie Ambrose
RESUME
SOLO SHOWS
2023: Alternate Routes: Alias Gallery, Orleans, MA
2023: Scenic Route: The Commons, Provincetown, MA
2022: Wanderlust: Gallery 444, Provincetown, MA
2021: Wherabouts: Off Main Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
2021: You Are Here: Gallery 444, Provincetown, MA
2020: Around the World in 366 Boxes: Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2018: What's Left Behind: Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2017: Excavations: Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Daily Altered Image: Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2016: Short Stories: Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
2015: Hidden Truths: A Gallery, Provincetown, MA
TWO/THREE PERSON SHOWS
2020: In The Annex: Fountain Street Gallery, Boston, MA
JURIED SHOWS
PROVINCETOWN ART ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
2023: Winter Members’ Juried Show
Members’ Juried Show (at Provincetown Monument and Museum)
2021: Winter Members' Juried Show
Spring Members’ Juried Show
2020-2021: Members’ Juried Show (at Provincetown Monument and Museum)
2019: Winter Members' Juried Show
Spring Members’ Juried Show
2018: Winter Members' Juried Show
2017: Winter Members' Juried Show
2014: PAAM100
2012: Miniatures
Winter and Holiday
2011: Holiday
2010: Paper Works
Sculpture
Holiday
COTUIT CENTER FOR THE ARTS
2023: Book Marks
2021: Abstraction
THE CULTURAL CENTER OF CAPE COD
2024: Anything But the Marsh
2023: ISEA, Innovations 2023, (Juror’s Award)
2020: I See France
Impromptu
CAPE COD MUSEUM OF ART
2019: Member-able Creations
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
2020 (Oct/Nov): Higgin’s Gallery, Tilden Arts Center at Cape Cod Community College, MA
AWARDS
2024: Merit Award: International Society of Experimental Artists, Making Our Marks 2024
2023: Juror’s Award: International Society of Experimental Artists, Innovations 2023
PUBLICATIONS/PRESS
2020: Howard Karren, The Provincetown Independent, December 17th 2020, Sian Robertson Maps Out the Year 2020
2020: Uppercase Magazine, Issue 44: Map Sculptures featured.
2018: Susan Rand Brown, Provincetown Banner, August 2nd 2018: Sian Robertson Creates Webs of Connection
2017: M Sebastian Araujo, Speaking of Art, on Visit Provincetown Blog
2016: Steve Desroches, Provincetown Magazine, Volume 39, Issue 15/July 28th, The Geography of You and Me, and Everyone in between.
2015: Uppercase Magazine, Issue 26: Postage Portraits featured.
TEACHING
Ongoing: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Truro, MA
BIOGRAPHY
Sian Robertson (b. Carmarthen, Wales, 1963) grew up in South West Wales, in the UK. She received a BEd (Hons) from Rolle College in Exmouth, Devon and went on to work in the union and non-profit sectors in both Bristol and London until moving to America in 1992. After seven years in San Francisco she settled on Cape Cod running retail stores and working in an art gallery in Provincetown.
Robertson has never received any formal art training but has been cutting and pasting, amongst many other creative pursuits, since she was about eight. 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 2023 Robertson was the recipient of the Juror’s Award at the International Society of Experimental Artists’s annual show, Innovations, held at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
Robertson’s Postage Portraits were featured in Uppercase Magazine in 2015, and her Map Sculptures in the same publication in 2020. She was the subject of articles in Provincetown Magazine in 2016, the Provincetown Banner in 2018, and the Provincetown Independent in 2020. Robertson teaches classes at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, and at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.