Cassandra Laing has recently been awarded the Macgeorge Honarary Fellowship, at the University of Melbourne / 2004. She is winner of Commendable Oil, R & M McGivern Art Prize 2003, selected finalist entrant Darebin-La Trobe Acquisitive Art Prize 2003, and winner of the 2002 UMPA Art Prize, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne plus finalist for 2003, and selected for the Bundanon Residency for 2004.
Cassandra Laing’s forthcoming show adrift - take us on two journeys - to the ice landscapes of the southern oceans (once called the
'Sea of Darkness') and the dark outer reaches of space.
"Her surreal landscapes are a heady blend of memory and myth, metaphors for life as a spiritual journey. Laing is a skilful painter and colourist whose work evokes feelings of wonder and unease…, Laing won two university art prizes in 2002 and is definitely an artist to watch" Laura Murray-Cree Young Guns State of the Arts, 2003
Inspired by an interest in Tibetan Buddhism, astronomy and the landscapes of Antarctica, Laing’s new paintings present reincarnation as a luminous white continent. With this focus on the notion of 'luminosity', the white continent and the dark night sky are metaphors for the intermediate state of becoming between one and the next, where memory is a powerful and formative force.
Drawing on the themes of traditional Tibetan Buddhist texts where light and colour describe the process of dying and rebirth, Laing’s imagery is evocatively silent. Light in Laing’s landscapes is diffused, radiant and held within in the ice. The scale and alien nature of the landscape distends space and time reinforced by the absence of human form.
The lightness of the landscapes is presented in opposition to darkness of death -and ironically the southern ocean surrounding Antarctica was once referred to as ‘the sea of darkness’. So too the act of remembering is defined in opposition to the numbing cold of the ice and the process of forgetting.
As suggested by the title of the exhibition - adrift - in the realm of reincarnation the self is destabilised and unfixed as memory and identity fluctuate and regenerate.
|
