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JANET LAURENCE
 

(b. 1947 in Sydney, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney.)

 

Janet Laurence is recognized as one of the most accomplished Australian artists. Bridging ethical and environmental concerns, Laurence’s art considers the inseparability of all living things and represents, in her words, “an ecological quest”. For over 35 years, Laurence has explored the interconnection of all living things – animal, plant, mineral – through her multi-disciplinary practice. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, she has employed diverse materials to explore the natural world in all its beauty and complexity, as well as the environmental challenges it faces today. Researching historical collections and drawing on the rich holdings of natural history museums, her practice has, over time, brought together various conceptual threads, from an exploration of threatened creatures and environments to notions of healing and physical, as well as cultural, restoration. Exploring notions of art, science, imagination, memory, and loss, Janet Laurence’s practice examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world through site-specific, gallery, and museum works. Laurence creates immersive environments that navigate the interconnections within the living world. Her work explores what it might mean to heal, albeit metaphorically, the natural environment, fusing this sense of communal loss with a search for connection with powerful life-forces. Laurence’s work alerts us to the subtle dependencies between water, life, culture and nature in our eco-system. Her work reminds us that art can provoke its audience into a renewed awareness about our environment.

Janet Laurence is well known for her public artworks and site-specific installations that extend from the museum and gallery into the urban and landscape domain. Recent significant projects and commissions include: a commission with The Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne (2017); an installation for The Pleasure of Love, October Salon, Belgrade (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, for the Paris Climate Change Conference (2015) and FIAC, Paris (2015), followed up by the installation Deep Breathing at the Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Tarkine for a World in Need of Wilderness, Macquarie Bank Foyer, London (2011); In Your Verdant View, Hyde Park Building, Sydney (2010); Waterveil, CH2 Building for Melbourne City Council; Memory of Lived Spaces, Changi T3 Airport Terminal, Singapore; Elixir, permanent installation for Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan (all 2006); The Australian War Memorial (in collaboration with TZG Architects), Hyde Park, London (2003); In the Shadow, Sydney 2000 Olympic Park, Homebush Bay (2000); Veil of trees, Sydney Sculpture Walk (with Jisuk Han); 49 Veils, award-winning windows for the Central Synagogue, Sydney (with Jisuk Han, 1999); The Edge of the Trees (with Fiona Foley), Museum of Sydney (1994); and The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (with TZG Architects, 1993).

Laurence has participated in numerous international Biennales and exhibitions. Major exhibitions include: The Entangled Garden of Plant Memory, Yu Hsiu Museum, Taiwan (2020); the major survey exhibition Janet Laurence: After Nature curated by Rachel Kent, MCA, Sydney (2019); Matter of the Masters, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017); Inside the flower, IGA Berlin, Berlin (2017); Force of Nature II, curated by James Putnam, The Art Pavilion, London (2017); the 13th Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador (2016); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Australian Museum, Sydney (2016); Anthropocene, Fine Arts Society Contemporary, London (2015); Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef, Muséum National D’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, (2015); Plants Eye View, Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong (2013); After Eden, Tarrawarra Museum of Art (2013) and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney (2012); Memory of Nature, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie, New South Wales (2011); 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); In The Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2010); Clemenger Award, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2009); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan (2003, 2006); Ferment, Faculty of Art & Design Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne (2002); 9th Biennale of Sydney (1992); and Australian Perspecta (1985, 1991, 1997).

Laurence’s work is included in many Museum, University and Corporate collections as well as within architectural and landscaped public places, worldwide, including: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Museum Kunstwerk, Eberdingen, Germany; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Seibu Collection, Tokyo; World Bank Collection, Washington DC; University of New South Wales, Sydney; University of Western Australia, Perth.

Laurence is a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill and Australia Council Fellowships, and the Alumni Award for Arts, UNSW. She was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, a former Board Member of the VAB Board of the Australia Council, was Visiting Fellow at the NSW University Art and Design, and held the 2016/17 Hanse-WissenschaftKolleg (HWK) Foundation Fellowship. In 2015 Laurence was the Australian representative for the COP21 / FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate Exhibition, showing a major work at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France. In 2019 Laurence had a major solo survey exhibition, After Nature, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.



 

“These are the days of violent extinctions, of global dimming and moving dust bowls, of habitat fragmentation, ice melt, and plundered lives. Animals are experiencing all this loss, and if we could better hear the waves of their agony, we would know this and be tormented. We would know that for the rest of our lives we will hear a growing chorus of increasingly diverse voices…”
– Debbie Bird Rose

 

VANISHING

2009/10, Video, 9 min 16 sec

 

 

Vanishing is Janet Laurence’s first video work, made during a residency at the Toranga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. Intended to be shown as a 2-channel immersive installation, the video is composed of extreme close-ups of the bodies of various animals breathing. As they inhale…exhale…inhale…exhale the images are accompanied by a meditative soundtrack of deep breathing, snuffling, purring, rumbling. The sound of the breathing shifts and changes but creates a slow rhythm that connects to our own breath. The work continues Janet Laurence’s focus on bringing into art the threat mankind poses to to our fragile natural environment and to those that inhabit it.

After working primarily in photography and installation, Laurence began an ongoing filmic study of animals both in the wild and in nature reserves. She has developed a filming technique in which she uses infrared night cameras – similar to those used by naturalists, as many animals are primarily active at night – in order to achieve a negative effect and distorted, ghostly coloration. Originally shown as a two-screen installation, this single channel version was specially released for the MOMENTUM Collection following the artist’s participation in a panel on art and science in MOMENTUM’s inaugural event in Sydney in 2010 .



 

“This ecological crisis demands we shift our focus from a human-centred perspective to a broader multispecies, environmental approach, for how else are we to live ethically and find our place in this world.”
– Janet Laurence

 

GRACE

2012, Video, 5 min 22 sec

 

 

“This is one of a series of videos made during my research in wildlife sanctuaries, using hidden cameras specialized for zoology research. In projection, the videos are altered and slowed… I want to bring us into intimacy with these animals and to reveal our interconnection… I want to bring us into contact with the life-world. With a focus on the animals and their loss, I think about the loneliness of the last one of a species. What was their death? I wonder about their umwelt, the unique world in which each species lives. The bubble of sensation.

This notion is powerfully articulated by the biologist Jacob von Uexküll, who has enabled rare insight into the worlds animals inhabit. An organism’s umwelt is the unique world in which each species live, the world as its body represents it, the world formed by the very form of the organism. It is a sensory world of space, time, objects and qualities that form perceptual signs for living creatures. I think it’s important to find this link in order to find compassion and care for developing a real relationship with other species we have to share the planet with.”

– Janet Laurence