Clementine
Robertson

While completing the study of theatre and performance at The Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, I developed an interdisciplinary arts practice driven by a passion for ecology and storytelling. I began directing and devising immersive performance and installations, intricately weaving studies of theatre and ethnobotany into visceral work. Each project is inspired by our inherent relationship with nature and most often the ancient land of my birth with its fractured history. 

In Scotland I collaborated with dancers and musicians and continued to expand my creative practice independently as a performer and artist. Undertaking a residency in Japan with performers of the Butoh tradition furthered my comprehension of modern performative languages created in connection with natural topographies.

In 2013 characters from The Botanical Absurd performed within the Australia Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London; I was engaged by Hermes in 2014 as an artist for their Metamorphosis season with Paper Swan. The ever expanding sculpture series OOlithus was included in the exhibition Apologies to Roadkill at the Godinymayin Xijard River Arts and Culture Centre in Katherine, WA in 2017. The Young Pod, a piece woven from endemic and non-endemic plants with Ikat weavers in Cambodia was installed in the Mekong Ganga Textile Museum in 2017 where it remains on permanent display. In 2018 I performed and installed Reclaimer at the Alice Black gallery in Soho London, followed by Inability to Ground, another solo performance within a group exhibition held by Vest & Page, in the Netherlands in 2019. In 2021 I performed alongside local musicians at MONA in Tasmania in recognition of the endangered endemic plant species of this region. During the summer of 2023 I developed a site specific body of work while taking part in a residency and group exhibition titled Senza Forzare at Tenuta di Forci in Italy.

Aside from creating, I have acted as a researcher, creative director and advisor to ecologically and performative driven projects in both the Netherlands and the UK bringing together craftsmen, botanists and horticulturalists. Time spent in Arnhem Land with the Mapuru community of the Yolongu tradition, as well as with Ikat weavers in Cambodia conveyed vast maps of interconnected knowledge between people, plants and place that continue to surface within all facets of my work and collaborations with others.