New Figurative Paintings

For the opening exhibition of the new Workplace Gallery in the heart of Gateshead town centre, we are pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Newcastle based artist Laura Lancaster.

At first glance Lancaster's new work sits firmly within a tradition of figurative painting, portraiture and expressionism. With gestured rendering of heavy impasto brush strokes and with figures bleeding into the surrounding scene, often divorced from their identity through a splodge or smudge of paint, her figures maintain a slippery anonymity.

Lancaster's strategy undercuts the historical baggage of such a tradition. Found in unwanted photographs and discarded cine film from second hand markets or junk shops, her subject matter is gleaned from other peoples lost or abandoned memories. Lancaster's work inhabits the fleeting moment of the holiday snap or the passport photo. The intimacy of her small paintings is compounded by the distance of her process, her subject matter and method owing as much to the tactics of minimalism as to tradition. More recently Lancaster has begun a series of monochromes using only black paint on raw canvas, allowing the naked canvas to read as the highlight, further echoing the black burn of light into photographic paper. "…[Laura Lancaster] performs acts of rescue that are tender and cruel in equal measure by making paintings from the images they contain. Lancaster knows when she has found an image that has touched her: something touched with an odd banality, or ambiguity, or sorrow. She collects dreams of escape…" from 'What it Takes to Keep a Young Girl Alive'  by Moira Jeffery. In 'Workplace' published by Art Editions North. 2004. ISBN 1 873757 15 8 Laura Lancaster was born in Hartlepool and studied Fine Art at Northumbria University. In 2001 she won the Unilever Fresh Graduate Award. Her paintings have been exhibited throughout the UK. Past exhibitions include 'Punch' at Wills Art Warehouse London, 'A Thing About Painting' at Platform London, 'Vaguely Romantic' at Rosy Wilde London, and 'Afterlife' presented by VANE at Guildhall Newcastle and Chapter in Cardiff.