Laura Lancaster: Shadows and Mirrors

26 Apr-30 Jun 2018

Overview

Laura Lancaster’s recent portraits of women both in silhouette and reflected in mirrors are paintings of ‘bad’ and ‘accidental’ pre-digital snapshot photographs collected by the artist. Lancaster purposefully restages these throwaway images as powerful inversions of the male gaze. In the Shadow series her loose impasto brushwork pushes the figure towards abstraction. The body and the surrounding scene begins to merge, whilst what remains of the subject stares down the viewer - the features of the face obscured by shadow. In her Mirror series Lancaster draws upon the historical theme of the Vanitas, and references the occult practice of Scrying - staring into a reflective surface in order to induce visions or revelation. In these paintings Lancaster depicts the figures as gazing into the mirror, locked in an ambiguous, unresolved moment of longing.