CHASMSCHISM
CHASMSCHISM is an ongoing series of sculptural voids made outside - directly from cracks in natural rock formations.
Image: CHASMSCHISM exhibited as part of Stone (Butch) for Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019.
Stone (Butch), a solo presentation by artist Rosanne Robertson as a contemporary intervention within the display of work by Barbara Hepworth in gallery 3 at The Hepworth Wakefield.
The title Stone (Butch) introduces the act of connecting qualities of stone, water and other aspects of nature with our gender expressions, sexuality and identity. The term Stone Butch is taken from butch lesbian and trans activist Leslie Feinburg’s novel Stone Butch Blues. It is a term that has been used within butch and lesbian identity and is used to describe a masculine gender expression.
“The cops picked out the most stone butch of them all to destroy with humiliation, a woman everyone said, wore a raincoat in the shower.”
It is this raincoat layer, thick skin or barrier that I am interested in as a terrain and this is the terrain of the Stone (Butch) works. It is the dark spaces in the margins and cracks that I aim to transcend.
I see the sculptures as active forms in a raw state which belong to both the landscape and the body at the same time.
Left: Making of CHASMSCHISM, casting directly from The Bridestones on moors above Todmorden.