Laura Ellen Bacon: Inundation
Laura Ellen Bacon: Inundation
Laura’s work treated the white-cube gallery like an architectural container, with four distinct forms appearing to pour in through the roof apertures, waterfalling to the floor, eddying and surging against the constraints of three of the walls, and concluding with a frontal wave at the wide, usual entrance to the gallery. Access via this entrance was thus rendered impossible, turning it into a viewpoint, whilst a side access allowed more intimate viewing of the length of the piece. Visitors were fairly contained by the piece themselves, forced up close to the billowing curves as they walked along the length of the only remaining wall of the gallery. The work was startling in its scale, and immersive.
Mass was created by multiple human-scale gestures in willow, the whole bound together and articulated through a kind of drawing in space with the material to describe the direction and force of the work. Laura has drawn analogies between the immersive nature of the process, an all-consuming inundation, and the recent extraordinarily destructive flooding in Somerset and North Wales. Her experience of the flood was after the event; the willow she uses is a crop grown in Westonzoyland on the Somerset Levels. Flooding is a natural and accepted part of the cycle of the seasons there, but in the last winter, record-breaking levels of flooding forced people out of their homes and caused physical, social and economic devastation. The waters subsided just in time for the willow growers to perform their annual cropping. But evidence of the event remained; Laura observed that a silty residue was left on the willow whips, up to a tide-line which marked the flood level on the crop. While this was easily washed away during use, the notion remained that these plants could carry evidence of the event, even through the processes of cutting, bundling and transport from Somerset to her studio in the Peak District.
Roberts, Sara
2ad5cba8-8224-4c90-aa0f-0392732f3df6
21 July 2014
Roberts, Sara
2ad5cba8-8224-4c90-aa0f-0392732f3df6
Roberts, Sara
(2014)
Laura Ellen Bacon: Inundation.
Record type:
Art Design Item
Abstract
Laura’s work treated the white-cube gallery like an architectural container, with four distinct forms appearing to pour in through the roof apertures, waterfalling to the floor, eddying and surging against the constraints of three of the walls, and concluding with a frontal wave at the wide, usual entrance to the gallery. Access via this entrance was thus rendered impossible, turning it into a viewpoint, whilst a side access allowed more intimate viewing of the length of the piece. Visitors were fairly contained by the piece themselves, forced up close to the billowing curves as they walked along the length of the only remaining wall of the gallery. The work was startling in its scale, and immersive.
Mass was created by multiple human-scale gestures in willow, the whole bound together and articulated through a kind of drawing in space with the material to describe the direction and force of the work. Laura has drawn analogies between the immersive nature of the process, an all-consuming inundation, and the recent extraordinarily destructive flooding in Somerset and North Wales. Her experience of the flood was after the event; the willow she uses is a crop grown in Westonzoyland on the Somerset Levels. Flooding is a natural and accepted part of the cycle of the seasons there, but in the last winter, record-breaking levels of flooding forced people out of their homes and caused physical, social and economic devastation. The waters subsided just in time for the willow growers to perform their annual cropping. But evidence of the event remained; Laura observed that a silty residue was left on the willow whips, up to a tide-line which marked the flood level on the crop. While this was easily washed away during use, the notion remained that these plants could carry evidence of the event, even through the processes of cutting, bundling and transport from Somerset to her studio in the Peak District.
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More information
Published date: 21 July 2014
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 476553
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/476553
PURE UUID: 34790c35-89e0-4ac6-88d6-f37910283178
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 05 May 2023 16:47
Last modified: 05 May 2023 16:47
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Contributors
Curator of an exhibition:
Sara Roberts
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