Ro Robertson – The Swimmer

Every summer, the Georg Kolbe Museum displays a new temporary artwork in its garden. This year, Ro Robertson is presenting The Swimmer, which was created for the exhibition Creating space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss. With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra, and Ro Robertson.

Ro Robertson’s (*1984) sculptures draw on central ideas of constructivist sculpture. In her work, Robertson pays particular attention to materials, production methods, and titles: As a descendant of shipbuilders and heavy industry workers from Sunderland in northern England, steel, welding, and industrial processes form a significant biographical layer in her work.

Like Moss, Robertson has found a place to live and work in the far west of Cornwall. The landscape, tides and the region’s maritime history shape the sculptures, as does a queer community in which Moss is remembered today as an icon. During her lifetime —despite the support of Piet Mondrian— Moss remained largely excluded from the networks of modern artists in nearby St Ives, such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. For Robertson, it is all the more important to build bridges and open up spaces.

Robertson engages with Moss primarily as a sculptor. Both artists work in a materially driven manner and share an interest in formal principles such as repetition and the doubling of forms—gestures that in modernism also carry queer connotations. At the same time, Robertson expands the concept of sculpture toward the body and performance: sculpture is understood as a process, bound to place, time and embodied experience.

Robertson has created three sculptures specifically for this exhibition. Freeform I was “baptised” in seawater in the bay of Lamorna. The Swimmer will be on display in the garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum through 18 October, 2026.