Robin Arseneault is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art & Design (BFA, 1998) and the Edinburgh College of Art (MFA, 2005). She received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award in 2008 and has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Alberta Heritage. Her practice is diverse, including drawing, photo-based imagery and sculpture, collage and the creation of artist-books. She has shown across Canada and in the USA, Scotland, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands. Arseneault has work placed in private and public collections, including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Art Gallery of Alberta, Nickle Galleries, Scotiabank Art Collection, Fairmont Hotel Group, La Maison Simons Department Store among others. She recently completed her second commissioned public sculpture, called Balancing Act.
For over twenty years, Arseneault’s work has sat at the uncomfortable intersection of failure, abjection and humour. With a wide and changing use of materials like paper, clay, wood, brass, bronze, and found images and objects, she extends her materials past their boundaries, accentuating what is visceral and tactile within them. The images and sculptures that emerge often explore the uncanny, the tragic or the comic.
