Clare Robb is a recent graduate from The Glasgow School of Art. She lives and works in Carnoustie, Angus, on the east coast of Scotland. As a jeweller and object-maker her works are retainers of memory, inspired by collecting and gathering small, discrete objects.
Objects trigger memories and transform recollections into palpable experiences. This practice embodies wearable and sculptural pieces and each piece she makes is conceived to reconnect its user with such things as a sense of place, nostalgia, and the human body itself; matters which are easily neglected but which are intrinsic to our everyday lives.
Clare’s work acknowledges the mundane to underline ways in which we curate our lives through the choice of items that surround us. To her, collecting is a means of expression, of selfhood, brought about by selection and curation which is presented through her work. She invites viewers to consider their own walking mementos; objects secreted in pockets – shells, stones, and even discarded belongings – which give body to a landscape’s complex historical and social realities through their compact forms.
On residency at Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg, Clare explored the extremities and junctures of this concept; considering what abandoned traces communicate about the biography of place. She resolved to gather evidence which reflected the island and her time within it. The other Cross Currents residents joined her in collecting objects which communicated their own experiences on residency. During lockdown feelings of creative isolation and digital weariness set in and a desire to connect with others was cultivated. Robb devised virtual workshops, which centred on these collected objects, to consider ways that objects gathered from our surroundings can link our identities to a sense of place.
www.clarerobbmaker.co.uk
View/download Clare’s Cross Currents poster here.