Clive Robertson

Research Interests

Canadian and contemporary art post-1960; performance art studies; administrative logic and alternative forms and practices of art and cultural production; social movement theory and cultural policy studies.

Departmental Administration:

2010-11 Acting Head, Department of Art; 2008-10 Undergrad Chair, Art History. 

Biography

Working as an artist, curator, critic and artist historian since 1972, Clive Robertson attended art colleges in Plymouth, Liverpool and Cardiff before receiving an MFA (Performance Art Studies) from the University of Reading (UK) in 1971, and a doctorate in Communication Studies, Concordia, 2006. As an emerging artist, curator and publisher he worked with Fluxus artists, Joseph Beuys, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles while curating a number of defining Canadian and international performance and video festivals in the 1970s, and media arts exhibitions and events in the 1980s and 1990s. His performance, video and audio works have been seen and heard in North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan and Australia. THEN + THEN AGAIN: Practices Within An Artist-Run Culture, 1969-2006 was a national touring archival retrospective exhibition (2007-11) of his individual and collaborative art, curatorial and publishing projects. His work is also currently featured in a Canadian joint museum touring exhibition: TRAFFIC: Conceptual Art in Canada c. 1965-1980.

Prior to teaching art history and cultural studies at Queen's, for 30 years Clive worked as a media artist, theorist, practitioner and national policy spokesperson within the artist-run centre movement directing interdisciplinary production and display spaces in Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa. An exemplar of multi-format publishing, Clive is a founding editor/publisher of Voicespondence Audio Art Publishing, Arton's Video Publishing and Centerfold/ FUSE magazine. His writings on art and culture have appeared in Art & Artists, artsCanada, Parachute, FILE, FUSE, La Mamelle, High Performance, Parallélogramme, C Magazine, Public,   Inter, Akimbo and RACAR, with 23 book chapters published on performance, media arts, cultural politics and policy. He is an international editorial board member of Inter magazine and remains on the advisory board of FUSE magazine.

Clive's current research project, "Living in our Sixties," is a feature-length video documentary on an early 1960's formation of artist friends and colleagues in England and Wales and their connective paths and passions as artists, poets and musicians.