Scottish artist Murray Robertson studied at Glasgow School of Art and continues to live and work in Glasgow. Whilst maintaining an interest in traditional fine art printmaking through many years of association with the Glasgow Print Studio it is the research, development and application of new technologies, specifically digital imaging and printing, that has most influenced current professional practice, be it in the role of Master Printer at Glasgow Print Studio managing the Digital Imaging Suite and disseminating that knowledge to others, or as an individual practicing artist. Engagement with varied interdisciplinary projects has provided continued inspiration and evolution to ideas and practice.
Diagrammatic representations and their related iconography has motivated recent works that explore relevant myth, history, geology and environment seeking to engage these subjects using sources including textbooks on natural history, early and contemporary printed maps, scientific/technological imagery and cultural icons.
Murray Robertson, November 2013.
Maps are one of the most ancient and most modern of products. All human beings acquire knowledge of their surroundings through personal encounter and communication with others; transforming these ‘mental maps’ into artefacts; essentially, making a map as something to extend memory and which may be made sense of by others arguably predates writing. Yet our understanding of a map as a scaled representation of the real world designed in standardised ways is relatively recent. Maps, then, are complex cultural creations that need to be understood in the context of the times and peoples who made them.
Mapping Scotland, Charles W.J. Withers