I've been a huge fan of Laura's work since her 'Graduate in Residence' show way back in 2016, a show which I was lucky to document as Laura created these incredible pieces at Grays School of Art. Since then she has been a firm friend and kindly put some work into the MoC x 10 exhibition in 2019. A move to Glasgow has seen Lauras work continue to develop as bigger studio spaces have allowed her to scale up her already impressive work ethic. Using paper and found materials, Laura creates impressive hanging structures, often using wooden pallets as a base, adding expanding foam, paper mache and dried pant to create crust infused art that is both imposing and delicate, as the piles of crust at their base reveal.
With Look Again Aberdeen looking to curate more gallery based shows this year the team had lined up an exciting roster of artists to take up residence in their St Andrew Street space. Of course Covid 19 meant that all shows would be cancelled. But in the lead up to her show Laura has been exploring the idea of paper environments that pull together a few different elements where her work, literal walls made of paper much like her paintings form a space where performances can take place, changing the work from something which can be observed passively to something which can be interacted with and within.
Over the course of a few weeks in August Laura began building the paper cave in a Glasgow studio, utilising old copies of the Skinny Mag and student guides collected from her day job at Bloc to form the basis for the work. It seems apparent that Laura's old technique of hand ripping paper would be too arduous for such a large project and instead opted for the use of a paper shredder, diligently manned by friends who took turns shredding up the mountain of paper required. Every week during the build Laura and Look Again would share progress of the build, giving us a look behind the wizards curtain at the work as it progressed. This aspect is often missing from normal exhibitions and shows where the final outcome if often deemed the important part where as I prefer to see the artists journey. When I worked with Laura back in 2016 I discovered first hand how much energy goes into her art and how personal the work can be to her.
As the cave neared completion the next phase of the project began to take shape with a series of performances which were filmed and shared over the course of the month, a physical residency manifested and transformed for digital platforms. Perhaps this was always part of the project but it felt like a nice way to bring life to the paper cave as each inhabitant brought a different skill to the space. Musical performances, performance artists, poets and techno DJs all took up residence in the space and warped the cave walls to their own needs. If you missed them you can watch all of the perfomance's here.
As anyone who's met Laura will testify, its not only her work that's powerful but also her ability to pull together different people, performers, videographers, sound engineers, lighting techs, paper shredders and friends to make something special happen. The videos allow us to not only see the project as it unfolded but will allow us to look back in a years time when the cultural landscape will hopefully look a lot better and will serve as testament to her and the Look Again teams tenacity to make the best out of the current situation. With no end in sight we really need to apply a creative approach to how we move forward, both as creatives but also in the wider context of society. I mean if you haven't built your own 'Paper Cave' were you even in a lockdown?
It's fitting that the project was kicked off with a scribbled note on a billboard, a source of material for many of Laura's previous paintings which have used paper from discarded billboard ads. With advertisers unable to paste up new ads, the blank billboard was adorned with #papercaveantirave August 2020 and below you can see the final part of the project as the billboard has finally been up dated, not with the usual trashy advert but with an image of Laura's artwork, a nod to her practice and the culmination of the project. And of course it wouldn't be complete without a full on pop up rave under the billboard, taking the indoors outdoors as the project is freed from the studio, the anti rave becoming a pro rave and giving us a reminder of the good times. The whole project is proof that you can't keep a good gal down, and Laura is definitely one of the best.
Be sure to check out all the videos and documentation from the project over on the Look Again insta feed here and Laura's feed here. Well done everyone for creating something special during these difficult times. Rave on!
