Hello
I'm Roxane Permar, an artist based in the Shetland Islands. This web site is an archive of my practice. There are a few more sections to complete, including various small events, international exhibitions and miscellaneous digital works, installations and sculptures.
You can see recent work on two other web sites: Cold War Projects, which is my collaboration with artist Susan Timmins, and Landscape in Pain, a web site for a project I started in 2021 that has taken my work into issues linked to energy, environment and community. I welcome any suggestions you might have because this web site is very much a work in progress.
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I'm trying to make this web site less energy hungry, which is why the background is dark and text is light, but not white. I haven't finished the process yet, so apologies for the mix of colours for backgrounds and texts.
Photo: UHI
About Me
I was born and raised in Pennsylvania and moved to the UK in 1975. This web site is about my art practice, past and present. My ways of working have changed over the years in response to world events, evolving practices in contemporary art and my personal situation. I am making pages visible as I complete them, so please come back to see updates and new sections.
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There are many terms of reference to describe my kind of art practice, including art in context, public art, participatory art, socially engaged art, and, more recently, art and social practice, embedded or situated practice. While I prefer the latter, 'situated practice', all of these terms describe my practice at one time or another. The importance of place has always underpinned my work, and the term 'art of place', as defined by Jeff Kelley in the early 1990s, also describes it well.
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Much of my work is collaborative. More recently it has focussed on the Cold War period, particularly in Shetland. I work in collaboration with the artist Susan Timmins. You can find out more about this work on our dedicated web site, Cold War Projects, although I also include a little bit on here in the Nuclear section. I have another web site, titled Landscape in Pain, which I created in June 2021 to hold the work I am making in response to the Viking Energy Wind Farm development in Shetland.
I have always worked in education, mostly part-time, but in 2017 I became a full-time Research Fellow at the Centre for Island Creativity based in UHI Shetland, one of the academic partners in the University of the Highlands and Islands. In 2024, following a process for 'restructuring', I became a part-time lecturer again, although I still engage in research. You can see my academic research profile here.
