Laura Lancaster: Ellipsis: WORKPLACE GATESHEAD

Laura Lancaster

ELLIPSIS

Preview: 6pm – 9pm Friday 18th September 2015
Exhibition continues: 19th September – 31st October 2015
Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 5pm or by appointment

Workplace Gallery
The Old Post Office
19-21 West Street
Gateshead NE8 1AD

WORKPLACE  is delighted to present Ellipsis, Laura Lancaster’s 4th solo exhibition at our Gateshead gallery.
Lancaster’s recent paintings are based upon her collection of found anonymous home movies. The
incorporation of moving image into her work marks a significant departure for Lancaster. Her new
paintings explore the cinematic and the temporal contained with the found image whilst, simultaneously,
the depiction of the physical film as object opens up the painting process itself allowing for a deeper
investigation into the mechanics of images, and the way in which they are created and consumed.

In all the works, evidence of the film as an object is visible, in the sprocket holes and marks left on the
film, referring to its mechanical, functional characteristics. These elements disrupt the coherence of the
images highlighting their constructed nature. These devices also force the abstract and the figurative to
exist on the same picture plane and allow for this dialogue to take place more overtly within my
practice. (Laura Lancaster, 2015)

The exhibition title Ellipsis refers to a continuity-editing device used in filmmaking. An ellipsis in narrative
leaves out a portion of the story, often to condense time, or to allow the viewer to fill in the missing
narrative with their imagination. Lancaster’s series of large diptychs extract the first and last frame from
a film and place them one above the other, literally only showing the beginning and the end. The notion
of movement and time is also present in Lancaster’s recent painting installations comprised of multiple
images taken from a sequence of frames from a film. Threshold 2015 is made up of 24 individual
paintings, with a single super-8 film frame as its source. Hung sequentially, the paintings represent one
second of footage based on the cinematic frame rate of 24 frames per second. Threshold focuses upon
the dichotomy of stillness and movement, the animate and the inanimate inherent within the painted film
still.

The repetition of the figure in this work restates its own artificial, constructed nature over and over
again... This split second of recorded time is analyzed and revisited throughout the painting process
and as a result my presence is woven into the temporality of the film, as an unseen observer.
(Laura Lancaster, 2015)

Laura Lancaster was born in Hartlepool, UK in 1979. She lives and works in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.
Forthcoming exhibitions include: Musee d'art Moderne St Etienne, France and New Art Gallery Walsall,
UK,. Selected exhibitions include: DISMALAND, Weston-super-Mare, UK, A Stranger's Dream,
Sargents Daughters, New York, USA, Private Utopia: Contemporary Art from the British Council
Collection Tokyo Station Gallery, Itami City Museum of Art, the Museum of Art, Kochi and Okayama
Prefectural Museum of Art, Laura Lancaster Wooson Gallery, Deagu, Korea, Painting past Present
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK, 40 Years of Women Artists from the Private Collection New Art
Gallery Walsall, UK, John Moores Painting Prize Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Ego Documents The
Autobiographical in Contemporary Art Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, Micro Narratives Musee d'Art
Moderne de Saint-Etienne, Incontri, in the Accademia d'Ungheria a Roma, Past as Present York Art
Gallery, Giardino Luoghi Della Piccola Realta Palazzo Della Arte Napolii, Local Stories Museum of
Modern Art Oxford, Blue Star Red Wedge Glasgow International, When I Lived in Modern Times
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, UK, Laura Lancaster DLI Museum, Durham, UK, New Works on
Paper by Laura Lancaster MIMA, UK.
Collections include: British Council, The Government Art Collection UK, UBS Bank, Simmons &
Simmons, Ernst & Young, Unilever PLC, The Hort Collection, The Lodeveans Collection, The Cartin
Collection USA, Girl's Club Collection, USA, The Zabludowicz Collection, Nerman Museum of
Contemporary Art USA, Tyne and Wear Museums Collection UK, New Art Gallery Walsall UK, and
numerous international Private Collections.