Laura Lancaster

You are a Movement

16th October - 13th November 2010
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm
(or by appointment)

Preview: Friday 15th October, 6 - 9pm

Workplace Gallery is pleased to present You are a Movement our second solo exhibition of work by Laura Lancaster.

This exhibition of Lancaster's new work consists of a series of large-scale oil paintings alongside collage, works on paper, and film installation. Located firmly within a tradition of figurative painting and portraiture Lancaster's subject matter consists of images sourced from an archive of found anonymous photographs and family albums bought at charity shops, car boot sales and flea markets. Lancaster transposes these forgotten, lost or discarded moments of strangers' lives into vivid, fluid impressions that, through their painterly application, thwart any definitive understanding of their context or history. With an immediate and adept handling of paint, Lancaster's figures bleed into their surrounding scenes, moving towards an abstraction and ambiguity that divorces the subjects within her works from their specific identity and individuality, enabling their significance to relocate to a place of collective memory and experience that resonates with our own.

These new works by Lancaster signify a substantial shift in the development of her practice in terms of scale, physicality, and in her rejection of sentimentality, embracing a dynamic and vigorous ambivalence as a strategy towards an objective and searching investigation into both painting and humanity.

Laura Lancaster was born in Hartlepool in 1979 and graduated from Fine Art at Northumbria University in 2001. Her work has been exhibited in a number of high profile exhibitions internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Ego Documents. The Autobiographical in Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; 'Mediations' Voyage Sentimental, Poznan Biennial, Poland; Paintings From England & America, Crisp, London; Dawning Of An Aspect, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin; Secret Exhibition, Ma2 Gallery, Tokyo; Behind, Monitor, Rome; Micro Narratives, Musee d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne; Past as Present, York Art Gallery; Formal Dining, Hales Gallery, London; Giardino Luoghi Della Piccola Realta, Palazzo Della Arte Napoli; Local Stories, Museum of Modern Art Oxford; Blue Star Red Wedge, Glasgow International; When I Lived in Modern Times, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland.
Laura Lancaster lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. You are a Movement runs concurrently with Laura Lancaster's first major museum solo exhibition at The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (until 30th January 2011).

Workplace Gallery was founded by artists Paul Moss and Miles Thurlow; based in Gateshead UK, Workplace Gallery represents a portfolio of emerging and established artists through the gallery programme, curatorial projects and international art fairs. Workplace Gallery opened in 2005 at 34 Ellison Street, Gateshead - part of Trinity Square Shopping Centre particularly noted for its iconic Brutalist car park designed by architect Rodney Gordon for the Owen Luder Partnership, which featured as a key location in Mike Hodges 1971 cult British gangster film Get Carter starring Michael Caine. Since the original gallery was demolished in 2008 as part of the planned regeneration of Gateshead Town Centre, Workplace Gallery has relocated to The Old Post Office in Gateshead; a listed 19th Century red brick building built upon the site where the important British artist, engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) lived and died.

The next exhibition at Workplace Gallery will be a solo exhibition of new work by Cecilia Stenbom opening on 19th November 2010.

To celebrate the opening of You are a Movement please join us afterwards at Central Bar in Gateshead.

Kindly supported by: