About
Cell Project Space will present a solo project by Laura Buckley; the gallery's second solo commission for the CYcLORAMA programme.
Laura Buckley works sculpturally with projected light, making it visible as a medium and causing its dispersal in space, therefore the built environment and structural support that surrounds it have become an integral part of the work. For âFata Morgana', Buckley will realise an ambitious expansion of her practice incorporating her digital scans, âMoving Image Series' (2010-11), as a starting point for a new intervention in the gallery.
For the past 2 years Buckley has been composing digital images by moving small constructed objects and personal ephemera across the glass bed of a digital scanner. The artist monopolises the extreme and momentary flashlight within the machine's intimate internal space to disperse and transform the reprographic image. This process heightens what really occurs, as rays of light are bent through layers of small shards of Perspex, and strobe across personal objects as they shift across the scanner. The remnants of these mini-actions are the surreal digital traces of slippage, a strobe effect documenting the artist's gestures as they dissolve and morph, at times resembling brushstrokes.
As with much of Buckley's work interventions emerge from âthe slight' and âthe everyday' with an inquisitive approach to play and exploration, evident in her film, which is often ad-hoc personal footage, shot using a combination of pocket and mobile phone cameras. Importantly Buckley reveals the process by which works of art and images generally emerge, revealing the methods of installation and equipment she uses. The intermittent background voices of characters present other than the artist are as equally important to her sound track as are the low-fi production techniques, ambient noises and synth tones created. However reductive the qualities of her methods, the rich figurative image is bounced and reflected across mirror and Perspex geometric planes transforming it into substance and its own materiality. âFata Morgana' will transform the intimate space of the scanner's bed to a more human scale as the viewer is immersed inside a giant vessel of projected light. The scenes of everyday life depicted in Buckley's films will be transformed to reveal a type of mirage on the viewer's horizon, where all interventions will repeat, bend, transform and radiate.
In 2010 Laura Buckley's first solo exhibition was hosted by Mothers Tankstation, Dublin and she was shortlisted for the 'Converse/Dazed Emerging Artist Prize', with an exhibition of her work at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. She produced 'The Mean Reds', a solo exhibition at Supplement, London in July this year. Group shows include âEt De Lumiere' (with Jacob Mattner), 401 Contemporary, Berlin, 2010, âLaura Buckley, Hugo Paris, Haroon Mirza & Doug Fishbone', Rokeby, London, 2009 and âMaterial Presence' at 176 Gallery, 2008.
Supported by the Arts Council of England and the Irish Arts Council.
