Janet Laurence
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JANET LAURENCE Bird song (2006) (detail), 700 birds from the ornithology collection of the Australian Museum, Sydney; sound piece by Ross Gibson and Jane and Phillip Ullman, 700cm diameter, installation at Object Gallery, Sydney FEATURE JANET LAURENCE POETRY AND ALCHEMY The distinctive artworks and installations of Janet Laurence reflect her lifelong interest in the interconnectedness of all living things and her ecological understanding of the world. Her works – in museums and galleries as well as outdoor sites and domestic spaces – are as much poetic and alchemical as they are scientific and art-historical, but they are always grounded in nature words: Laura Murray Cree portrait: Stephen Oxenbury ife-support systems for burnt and a blushing smoothness. Silicon tubes and glass the veils. Today, Laurence is intrigued by ravaged landscapes and, by vials holding flesh-coloured fluids of varying scientific experimentation to exploit the implication, for an imperilled transparency hung in floor-length “curtains” “intelligence” of various materials, such as glass, planet, have been a particular focus from the branches. Spectral shadows extended which can be manufactured to respond to a L of Janet Laurence’s work since the physical reach and drama of the work. During finger touch, clouding over to control light and 2004. Taking her portable the exhibition viewers questioned whether the temperature in interior spaces. laboratory of beakers, flasks, tubes, elixirs and fluids signified an intensive-care treatment for Conversely, the transparency of glass is veils to threatened or destroyed landscapes in the tree or whether it was bleeding. The revelatory, reflecting the transient effects of light Australia and Central America, she creates ambiguity of the work, titled Heart Shock, and its and allowing us to witness processes of change. remedial installations in poetic homage to lost layered references to the human body, speak of Recently, working with glass blower Gabriella and endangered species. While regeneration of the “life-world” in a critical, perhaps terminal, Bisetto, Laurence has investigated what happens Tasmania’s Styx forest is impossible – clear-felling condition. Elsewhere, the suspended tree has when various plant specimens are placed into and the imposition of an exotic pine monoculture metamorphosed into (Exquisite) Carbon Corpse glass vessels as they are being made. She shows having reduced the old-growth forest floor to (2008), an unadorned miniature specimen, me dramatic photographs of Bisetto handling the ground zero – Laurence brings a unique vision to blackened by fire and set on a mirror, its molten forms, flames issuing from their environmental catastrophe and its imagined reflection reiterating the “states of loss and apertures as Laurence introduces the organic reversal. She photographs her interventions from transformation of a burnt forest”. material – seaweed, cinnamon sticks, seed pods, many angles, recently introducing a glass sphere Laurence has long been drawn to reflective cones and other substances – finally to be sealed that becomes, at times, a lens through which to surfaces in her artworks, often favouring glass for within their transparent egg-shaped sarcophagi. capture the damaged or carbonised landscape. its alchemical properties, transforming from Laurence explains that the amount of carbon Later, in the factory, the images are transferred liquid to solid through the agency of fire and present within each substance determines how it onto glass or metal, the artist directing the allowing degrees of translucency and burns. process and pouring fluids and pigments onto the transparency. She talks about Leonardo da Vinci’s She discovers later, in her studio, that the reflective surfaces. The final layered works invite “sfumato”, his use of multiple layers of paint to carbonised fragments transform within the a corresponding reflection on the fragile ecology create shadows of ambiguity, as in Mona Lisa’s vessels, intensifying their aura as art objects. In an Manton Art and Arc One Gallery Art and an Manton of the natural world. enigmatic smile. Such layering slows perception, one egg, the seaweed breaks down to a powdery J For the 2008 Adelaide Biennial at the Art evoking the passing of time and memory, causing residue, which, in the process, gradually coats the Gallery of South Australia, Laurence exhibited a the viewer to linger and look more closely, glass in silvery greys; in another, seeds are suspended eucalypt, the limbs of which retained perhaps to meditate on mysteries that lie beyond released from their pods as a delayed Images courtesy the artist, Opposite: Janet Laurence (with her dog Wax) in her Sydney studio Above: Rape of the Styx (2005), Duraclear, shinkolite acrylic, mirror, glass, ash, oil, pigment, 300 x 30cm 70 ART WORLD AUG / SEP 2008 AUG / SEP 2008 ART WORLD 71 ate collection Priv Transient in Light (2007), glass-fired screenprint, olive trees, 1200 x 100cm Janet Laurence’s Sydney studio FEATURE JANET LAURENCE JANET LAURENCE FEATURE 1 2 5 34 Sydney Art, ary Collection Museum of Contempor consequence of the firing. Laurence has made a were, in fact, breathing. passengers on the First Fleet are inscribed on the as in Unfold (1997), installed as a walkway at the walls of the bar with reflected light and shadows. Laurence is now working on a “contemporary series of such works, titled Carbon Futures, one The experience was immersive for viewers, various surfaces; as pedestrians draw near the Art Gallery of New South Wales; or, in Thinking of this project I am reminded that idea and experience” of a herbarium. She of which is destined for the 2008 Biennale of despite their being unable to physically access stark vertical forms they discover the niche conjunction with Laurence’s natural history Laurence, as an art student, helped run a pub- visualises a site-specific work with “spaces of Architecture in Venice and the others for an the work, which allowed little space for inclusions and hear the whispering of names. project centred on Museum Victoria’s restaurant in central Sydney, handpicking fresh revelation” including a maze which, at its centre, upcoming exhibition at Arc One Gallery in movement around its perimeter and restricted Memory is implicit in Laurence’s quest to mammalian and ornithological collections, as produce from the markets each morning and will house a glass vessel containing botanical Melbourne. sightlines to narrow gaps between the bales. In record, gather, cultivate and nurture endangered taxidermy specimens. In Muses (2000), for cooking for an appreciative, artist-dominated specimens that once grew on the site. The maze his 1998 monograph on Laurence’s work, Peter plant species. Veil of Trees (1999), her example, species of deer, swathed in translucent clientele. Her interest in food and its will be a variation of her 2003 installation, Ghost Emmett remembered the work as: “Breath, body, collaborative installation with Jisuk Han for the white veils, were placed in lonely isolation on the transformations, as well as in nurturing others, Glasshouse (Sarcophagi), which comprises glass reath is fundamental to the animal, scent, the enticement of enclosure. She Sydney Sculpture Walk in the Domain, is a gallery floor, while the fragile remains of owls was evident even then. As we discuss the lineage panels inscribed with the names of lost species glassblower’s art. Coincidentally, seldom explores inside spaces with such planting of the native grasses and forest red gums and small birds were presented in glass vitrines. of her works, Laurence reiterates her superimposed on ethereal images of 19th-century Laurence has referenced breath sensuality… preferring the liberating lightness of that once covered this gentle rise from Sydney Elixir, Laurence’s permanent installation for appreciation of the interconnectedness of all glasshouses. Like the exotic plants they once in several of her works, among the outside. But each of her works has had a small Harbour. They weave through a passage of glass the 2003 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, engaged nature, the life-world to which we belong and on housed – transported by European botanists from B them Cellular Gardens: Where cave, a place of dark and solitary dwelling.” panels embedded with organic materials (seeds, local people and resources in the creation and which we rely for our existence. their countries of origin – many such glasshouses Breathing Begins (2006), In Edge of the Trees (1994–95), a constructed pollen, ash, resin, honey) and engraved with the continuing presence of her work. Community The talk turns to environmental issues no longer exist. The images Laurence has comprising living plants in glass vials alluding to urban “forest” of 29 pillars, Laurence used names of indigenous trees and fragments from renewal is the raison d’être of this worldwide surrounding water and, inevitably, to In the retrieved are suffused with memories of loss in the “lungs of the earth”; and The Breath We elemental materials – oxides, shells, honey, bones Australian literature. invitational event held in a remote area of rural Shadow (2000), her site-specific installation for the wake of the colonial enterprise. Share (2003), a commemorative sculpture for the and zinc – placed within “caves” or niches and More recent examples include Laurence’s Japan that is snowbound for six months of the the Sydney Olympic site. Here she planted a Janet Laurence is a consummate artist, whose Myer family, whose genealogy is inscribed on the sealed behind glass. A commission for the domestic-scale “medicinal gardens” – where year. Laurence reconceived a modest wooden forest of casuarinas on the banks of the polluted practice reflects her lifelong interest in the winter branches of a tree printed on glass panels. Museum of Sydney on the site of the colony’s first plants grow in glass vials and other containers – storage-house as a permanent elixir bar, with waters of a local creek, devising wands that were interconnectedness of all things. Her works are Breath was seminal to her installation for the government house, the installation was made in and a site-specific installation, Transient in Light plant-based tonics served in shot glasses.