Laura Gonzalez

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Every artist needs an Artist's statement, so here is mine.

Artist's statement

From a belief that the function of Art is to resolve conflicts —both internal and within a field of enquiry— my creative practice is concerned with the materialisation of ideas through a variety of different techniques. Having undergone a wholly interdisciplinary training in Spain, Portugal and the UK, I have produced paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs and sound installations. I decided to specialize in Drawing, concentrating on its a reflective attitude rather than understanding it as a choice of materials or an exploratory discipline culminating in other mediums.

Using drawing as a loose framework, I developed a working manifesto, taking the Dogme'95 Vow of Chastity as a model of how clear boundaries may enhance artistic outcomes. The Precarious Art Manifesto seeks to apply strategies found in homeopathic medicine and the writing of aphorisms to the creative process. The manifesto limits the characteristics of the pieces themselves: they must be economic in materials, shapes and actions; transportable (or, in some extreme cases, dispensable); repeatable and, above all, they must be displayed transparently. This 'less is more' approach was aimed at questioning structural and methodological issues before the metaphorical ones. However, every law has its loophole and, as the work tried to break free from the control imposed by the game of rule making, it showed apparent contradictions that ended up being part of the form itself.


Strange Animal, 2001

Being committed to research training in an academic context, I am currently developing a practice-led research project investigating the seductive possibilities of Fine Art objects. Part of a PhD degree, this projects seeks to understand cultural phenomena like the iPod and design icons like Juicy Salif, drawing up characteristics of visual seduction and applying them to the creation of art objects.

 

About Me

Laura Gonzalez is an artist and writer. Her practice encompasses drawing, photography and sculpture, and her work has been exhibited in the UK, Spain and Portugal. She has participated in numerous conferences, including Research into Practice (2008), College Arts Association and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (2007). When she is not following Freud, Lacan and Marx's footsteps with her camera, she lectures postgraduate students at the Glasgow School of Art.

She is currently immersed in an interdisciplinary project, which investigates psychoanalytic approaches to making and understanding objects of seduction within the fields of fine art, consumption studies and material culture. Her research includes an examination of parallels between artistic and analytic practices, a study of Manolo Blahnik's shoes as objects of desire, a disturbing encounter with Marcel Duchamp's last work, and the creation of a psychoanalytically inspired Discourse of the Artefact, a framework enabling the circulation of questions and answers through a relational approach to artworks. She seeks refuge and inspiration in psycho-geography, especially if it takes her to shopping centres, those mysterious places.