Ro Robertson: Holder Up

Maximillian William is delighted to present 'Holder Up', a new body of work by Ro Robertson, their third solo exhibition at the gallery. Drawing upon a working-class history of bodily engagement with the materials of heavy industry, Robertson channels the physicality of industrial labour through drawing, riveted steel collage, and welded steel sculpture, reinterpreting its gestures into rhythmical abstract form.

At the core of the exhibition, a pair of dynamic steel sculptures, 'Holder Up I' and 'Holder Up II', engage in a kind of dance. For the artist, the sculptures describe the space of two different sets of hands working in complete harmony – a joyous act of unity between body, metal and sound. A smaller sculpture, Construction I, occupies a high plinth, topped by a black rubber welding mat. Both a nod to modernist art movements such as constructivism and to the embodied skills of workers, the sculpture enacts a play of ideas also reflected in the wall-mounted construction in the opposite corner of the gallery, She Moves Out. A tension between vulnerability and strength underpins Robertson’s work, where the forces of rigid steel and fluid water become metaphors for the body’s capacity to endure, resist and transform.