Queer Periphery. Queer Artistic Life Outside the Cities.
The event brings together experts who share their knowledge of queer art histories outside major cities, focusing on rural areas as productive spaces for artistic practice. The starting point is the artist Ro Robertson, who lives and works in Cornwall, and the constructivist Marlow Moss, who was active in the same region until her death in 1958.
Through dialogue, the discussion will explore questions of visibility, networking and working conditions for queer artists beyond urban centres. What role do seclusion, community and landscape play in artistic processes? To what extent do these very contexts open up alternative perspectives on art history and the present?
The panel ties in with the exhibition Creating Space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss. With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra and Ro Robertson at the Georg Kolbe Museum and expands its themes to include a decidedly queer and site-specific perspective. Historical and contemporary positions are interwoven to reveal continuities and ruptures in queer realities of life and work.
With Ro Robertson (artist), Dr Lucy Howarth (co-curator, with Elisa Tamaschke, of Creating Space), Dr Anke Kempkes (independent curator and art historian), Dr Katy Norris (Tate St. Ives), hosted by Dr Elisa Tamaschke (Georg Kolbe Museum)
Programme:
Introduction
Elisa Tamaschke
Marlow Moss in Lamorna
Lucy Howarth
The Bird and the Wind and the Swimmer
Ro Robertson
Video presentation
Ro Robertson
On the Rocks, 2026
7:36
Single channel video
Filmed by SHARP and Ro Robertson, edited by Ro Robertson
BREAK 10 min
Ithell Colquhoun, Marlow Moss, Hans Arp – Living Stones, Organicity and the (Gender)Ambiguity of Constructed Form
Anke Kempkes
Curating and Queering in the Hinterlands
Katy Norris
Discussion
chaired by Lucy Howarth and Elisa Tamaschke