Aura | Laura Berger, Lydia Baker & Larysa Myers

About

Hands emerge from the darkness to cup and caress. Sunlight radiates through the haze to gleam on reclining figures. Heads lean solicitously towards each other in conversation or embrace. This collection of work by artists Laura Berger, Lydia Baker, and Larysa Myers draws together images of dreamlike states and feminised environments with an intimate focus on the female figure. 

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In these paintings and drawings, inner and outer landscapes converge, interweaving imagery of the natural world with evocations of psychological moments. All three artists use carefully chosen colour palettes to generate atmosphere and to capture powerful emotional states. In Larysa Myers’ characteristic graphite drawings, for example, monochrome is used to convey mysterious nocturnal scenes illuminated by moonlight. In a new triptych by Lydia Baker the temperature shifts from fleshy pinks in the left-hand panel to dreamy blues on the right, hinting at spiritual transformation, while the pared-back hues in Laura Berger’s paintings give them a timelessness that is enhanced by the figures’ nudity. 

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Throughout the exhibition, female forms are depicted as abundant vessels for psychological projections. The anonymity of the characters creates a sense of generosity and openness, allowing them to function as symbols while also subverting the ways in which archetypes have been used to restrict women’s power. For instance, in Larysa Myers’ work, hands are repeatedly used as synecdoche for the whole figure, often emerging disruptively from patterns that evoke both domestic interiors and the geometries of the natural world. ​

The use of esoteric symbols, surreal juxtapositions, and hazy environments adds to the dreamlike feeling of the show. Many of the works embody a slipperiness of meaning; as Laura Berger puts it, trying to unravel one of her images is like trying to grasp the details of a dream or memory as they slip away into the past. Motivations and backstories remain mysterious in her paintings, which instead embody moods and sensations. 

In this exhibition, a sense of peace is often counterbalanced by a simultaneous feeling of menace, drawing together dualities of isolation and togetherness, denial and fulfilment. Within these works, figures are frequently depicted finding a state of rest within an inhospitable or uncertain environment. In Lydia Baker’s triptych, a couple embrace while they look out over the site of an explosion or environmental event; Baker sees this in part as a response to shared fears around the unfolding climate crisis. 

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Taken together, the paintings and drawings of these artists hint at a central process of taking refuge through creative world-building. This could be seen as a mode of making sanctuary that avoids self-absorbed introspection. Instead, we find a form of generative escapism that connects both artist and viewer back to their environment and to the world around them. 

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Text by Anna Souter