Emelie Robertson: Sightlines

MFA Thesis Exhibition at artLAB Gallery, Department of Visual Arts, Western University

Emelie Roberston, installation of Sightlines, 2026. Photo: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator.

Emelie Robertson: Sightlines

May 22 – June 4, 2026
artLAB Gallery, London

Roberston writes:

Sightlines suggests a confluence of meeting points approached through multiple entries, navigating a delicate tension between material, memory, perception, and place. Within these works, the painted surface becomes a threshold for movement and observation, where perception entangles with intuition, recollection, and material. Meaning emerges through the act of making itself: a thought or memory carried through gesture and repetition, requiring both close observation and a submission to the materials’ own agency.

This process, as a form of perceptual exchange, creates a rhythm in which time collapses, coalesces, and transforms—like walking through a forest, and like memory itself. The works remain in constant negotiation between proximity and distance, perception and expression, stillness and movement, matter and intuition, clarity, and obscurity. In doing so, they reflect an artist working through her own emotional and entangled relationship to forests, trees, water, and the unresolved histories and responsibilities carried by the land, which continue to shape how it is seen, felt, and inhabited.

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Emelie Roberston, installation of Sightlines, 2026. Photo: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator.

About the Artist

Emelie Robertson is a painter based in London, Ontario. She received a BA (Honours) in Studio Art from the University of Guelph in 2019 and is currently an MFA candidate at Western University. Robertson has exhibited with Michael Gibson Gallery, Art Toronto, and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery. She has received support from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Originally from Geraldton in Northwestern Ontario, Robertson is of French and Scottish ancestry.

Emelie Roberston, installation of Sightlines, 2026. Photo: Dickson Bou, artLAB Gallery Preparator.

About the Gallery

Located in the John Labatt Visual Arts Centre at Western University, the artLAB Gallery and Cohen Commons, are vital facilities within the Department of Visual Arts. Our primary focus is to act as a pedagogical tool, to support student and faculty-led research and production. Exhibitions provide a platform to respond to pertinent social and cultural issues, and/or explore conceptual, formal and material-based interests. Able to accommodate a wide range of media, both the artLAB and Cohen Commons provide space for professionalization, as well as experimental approaches to exhibition making.

Western University is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Neutral (Chonnonton) peoples, on lands connected to several Treaties including Treaty 6 London Township, Treaty 7 Sombra Township, Treaty 21 Longwoods and the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. This place continues to be home to diverse Indigenous peoples who are recognized as contemporary stewards of the land and vital contributors to society.

artLAB Gallery
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre
Western University
1151 Richmond Street,
London, ON N6A 3K7
www.uwo.ca/visarts/artlab
artlab@uwo.ca
519-661-2111 ext 85855

Instagram @westernuvisarts
Facebook @westernuVisArts

Gallery Hours:
Monday – Friday, 12 – 5pm

Accessibility:
artLAB Gallery is fully accessible.

Image Descriptions:
1. Installation view of large-scale paintings on paper suspended at varying heights appearing to float in a white gallery space. The backs of the works intersect in the foreground, alongside colourful gestural paintings in portrait orientation and a 20-foot curved panoramic work in warm tones. One painting lies partially visible on the floor.

2. Installation view of large-scale paintings on paper suspended at varying heights, with one work lying flat on the floor. A 7-foot watercolour forest scene rests on the ground, beneath a hovering river landscape. Behind it, a curved panoramic painting in warm tones intersects a dark biochar ink surface.

3. Installation view of large-scale paintings on paper suspended from the ceiling. In the foreground, a landscape-oriented watercolour depicting an abstracted water scene hangs so its lower edge touches the floor. The reverse edge of a curved painting is visible at right. In the background, a vertically oriented painting is suspended high above the others.