Mali Robertson - BA (Hons) Fine Art
Mali Robertson is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice shifts between digital and physical realms, exploring texture, transformation, and material memory. Growing up in Cornwall, the coast’s raw energy and tactile landscapes remain central to her work. Her process begins with fish skin, once living, now a by-product, which she digitises. These textures are scanned, broken into pixels, built into voxels, and mapped into digital space. Through laser engraving, these digital skins return to the physical world, fossilised into both Cornish and Manchester slate, and cut into delicate paper sculptures. These spherical, net-like forms continue her exploration of fragility, structure, and distortion.
Her practice unfolds like a life-death-rebirth cycle through technology: flesh becomes pixel, and pixel returns as altered mark. A material record remains, organic surface to digital structure to permanent imprint. Her work blurs the boundaries between craft and technology, evoking post-apocalyptic worlds where nature and machine are intricately entwined.
In collaboration with graphic designer Beau Langmead, Mali was commissioned for Vertical Gallery. Sharing a deep interest in the symbiosis of man and machine, they created The Violence of a Thousand Paper Cuts, a fusion of image-making, sculpture, and material-led practice. The work investigates the residual human understanding as AI increasingly replaces human effort in daily tasks.
Photographs were laser cut into netted paper spheres, fragmenting images through a mesh-like pattern. Depending on the viewer's position, the visuals distort or reform, up close, they disintegrate; from afar, they coalesce. This disruption mirrors how meaning shifts through perspective, repetition, and digital manipulation. The viewer’s movement activates the piece, creating a dynamic interplay between image and body.
