Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Workplace Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong : Laura Lancaster

Laura Lancaster THRESHOLD, 2015, Oil on Linen, 240 x 480 cm, 94 1/2 x 189 in, Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery.

Laura Lancaster

Solo presentation

Discoveries Section
Hall 1 BOOTH 1C52

Art Basel | Hong Kong
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
15 - 17 March 2015

https://www.artbasel.com/en/Hong-Kong

 

For the Discoveries section of Art Basel Hong Kong we are proud to present a solo presentation of British artist Laura Lancaster.

 

Threshold (2015) is an installation of 24 paintings that have their pictorial origin in an ongoing collection of anonymous cine-films bought from e-bay and second hand stores. Lancaster has isolated one specific second of film (24 frames) which jumps from a single establishing shot, to the face of an unknown girl - who looks directly at the camera before she covers her face and turns her back to the viewer. Lancaster draws upon a patriarchal history of image-making - addressing the history of painting and portraiture through to the male gaze of cinema. Alongside Threshold, we will present Montage I and Montage II (2015) two horizontally arranged diptychs, which are made from the very first and last frames of found cine reels. Proportioned to a 16:9 ratio these works shift from figurative painting into a gestural abstraction, as the figurative scene in each image mutates into the geometrical registration marks of the original film. 

 

Lancaster's work to date is extracted from an archive of anonymous photographs procured from thrift stores and flea markets. Mediated through painting, her work transposes the forgotten and discarded snap-shots of strangers' lives into an ambiguous and uncanny territory between abstraction and figuration.Divorcing her subjects from their specific context and time, Lancaster relocates them to a place of collective memory and experience that resonates with our own. Her work oscillates between the nostalgic sentimentality of the celebratory moment, and the melancholic poignancy of the past. 

Laura Lancaster was born in Hartlepool, UK in 1979. She lives and works in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.

 

 

Laura Lancaster MONTAGE II, 2015 Oil on Linen (Diptych), 260 x 230 cm, 102 3/8 x 90 1/2 in, Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery.
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