Janet Laurence.
Janet Laurence's work is primarily concerned with our interaction with the environment and the consequences of that interaction.
Her meticulous explorations have seen her bringing together all manner of natural materials - plant matter, wood, ash, metals, wax and chemicals into works more akin to scientific experiments than just art.
Further to this, Laurence uses systems of classifications - boxes, rows and grids to emphasise the scientific connotations of her materials and her role as alchemist in the creation of her works.
In tandem with her use of natural materials Laurence also employs the use of photographic images taken from nature, which are then reproduced as transparencies and layered over each other to create ghostly vistas of the natural world.
As with Brown and Green it is the intersection of different worlds that give her work it's vigour - the contrast of the tactile "realness" of the natural materials she uses, whether it be a tray of seedings, spray-painted plant stock shrouded in tulle, a stuffed owl in a perspex cloche or a pile of charcoal from a wood fire - these textures are balanced against the subliminal beauty of her photographic images.
It is for these photographic images that Laurence uses Duraclear and Duratrans to great effect. She uses Duraclear mostly to produce images of luminous transparency that layer together to create works with a ghostly aura - in her work Selva Veils 2005 Laurence has had the images printed onto long, large strips of acetate that curl at the edges like a roll of film negatives, these strips have been installed to hang loose and overlapped on the gallery wall as if they are hanging to dry in a darkroom. The imagery seems a soft and subtle memory of a landscape lost. In other works, photographs of ornamental gardens are reproduced on Duraclear to document the effects of human intervention in the landscape, here too, the medium suggests something that is not sustainable and that is of a fundamentally ephemeral nature.
Selva Veils 2005
Duratrans is used by Laurence to make translucent lightboxes such as those in Forensic 1991, where these lightboxes are used to highlight images in her classification works, illuminating her notions on order and disorder in the natural world.
Forensic 1991
In recent times Laurence has started to use Digiglass to construct public works that are of a more durable nature than if they were made of Duratrans - I will look at Digiglass in another blog.
Here are a couple of works using Digiglass.
The Breath We Share 2003
More to follow.
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