Laura’s practice is interdisciplinary - Studio based work: sculpture, drawing and photography, Writing: on material encounters, and Fieldwork: workshops exploring materiality as participant and educator.
Laura’s practice focuses on process and how objects/things come into being, with an emphasis on the handling of materials, from stable material such as ceramics and concrete to the changeable matter of clay, bread dough, silicone rubber and rusting metal. Exploring and responding to material behaviours and her personal relationships to them, alongside their historical and social contexts.
It is important for her to be led by her materials and to collaborate with them, rather than imposing herself on them. Exposed to the breaks, mistakes and failures of materials to open up new directions and possibilities. She is drawn to materials and processes that challenge her physically, that are difficult to control, awkward to stabilize and resist being fixed. Working with unfamiliar materials and processes often involves learning new hands-on skills. One of the ways she does this is by expanding her skillset, such as learning skills in butchery, fish mongery, cheese making, sushi, patisserie, taxidermy, blacksmithing, shoemaking and glass blowing, all of which enrich her body-hand-material vocabulary.
The series of small works on display titled ‘Spurt’ grow up more uniformly than Laura’s larger works. The actions used in her large sculptures rely on her entire body to shape them, whereas these small works are a result of a more intimate material engagement, actions between fingers and thumb that have reduced the movement of her body, and as a result miniaturized the work.
