Caroline Roberts

Caroline Roberts explores the relationship between people and nature through camera-less processes. Her work, marked by chaos and control, reflects climate grief and wonder. With a background in Chemical Engineering and an MFA in Painting, she exhibits internationally and manages a riparian forest in Texas.
From: Houston, Texas, United States
Shows: Chemigrams, Cyanolumens

[Show slideshow]

Caroline Roberts explores the uneasy relationship between people and the wildness of the rat world. She thinks about the way landscapes change, the traces we leave, the narratives we form, and our complicated relationship with the world. Her personal relationship to a place – the climate, the native plants, the landscape – is the spark for each body of work. This work helps her understand climate grief while also celebrating her wonder in the world around, inspiring her to bear witness to all we stand to lose.

Caroline Roberts uses an experimental mix of camera-less processes, chosen for their inherent, wild unpredictability. She disrupts and pushes the boundaries of her processes, playing scientific documentation off against organic exploration as two sides of the same urge to discover and examine the world. Underpinning her highly experimental practice is a body of near-obsessive exploration and testing, mirroring our human attempts to understand and control nature. She frequently works outside, preferring the connection to the world around her over the isolation of the studio lab. Between this outdoor environment and the inherent unpredictability of the processes, her work holds a tension of chaos and control.
Her work ranges in size from unique prints to room-size installations. She combines pieces in ways that explore a variety of knowledge systems, from graphs to books to museum displays, highlighting the fragmentary nature of knowing and discovery.

Caroline Roberts has a background in Chemical Engineering and an MFA in Painting from the University of Houston. Her solo and small group exhibitions include Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, The Printing Museum, HCC Southwest, BOX13 ArtSpace, Lawndale Art Center and San Jacinto college in Houston, Texas, as well as A Smith Gallery, Austin, Texas, and Anzenberger Gallery, Austria. She has been a resident at The Printing Museum, BOX13 ArtSpace, and Penland School of Craft.

Often found hiking in state and national parks, Roberts’ interest in landscape and the natural world is heightened by managing fifteen acres of riparian forest in rural Texas. Born in the United Kingdom, she lives and works in Houston, Texas where there is ample sunshine for alternative processes.