JANET LAURENCE
SELECT COMMISSIONS / SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS

CLIFF
CURTIN UNIVERSITY COMMISSION FOR MAJOR PERMANENT INSTALLATION, 2022

In 2022 Janet Laurence completed a permanent installation at Curtin University in Perth. Titled CLIFF, this major piece required 150 unique rock and mineral specimens to be secured in a towering display.

This project was commissioned by Curtin University and completed with support from Event Engineering and Apparatus. The recently completed building was designed by John Wardle Architects.

“Imagine you are climbing a cliff, as you ascend the viewing staircase. CLIFF brings you the earth, not as a representation but as presentation of Earth itself, in the form of rocks each with its own story – of time, weather, movement, and formation.

If the building is a wunderkammer, these stones can be seen as exhibits, but unlike a Natural History Museum, they have been released from their modes of exhibiting. Instead, they create the suggestion of mapping the landscape. I want the art to enable a direct experience of the Western Australia landscape as enspirited matter and memory of the earth.” - Janet Laurence, 2022

The Breath in Glass
CANDELAPAS ASSOCIATES ARCHITECTS AND STASIA PROPERTY ARCHITECTURAL COMMISSION, 2022

In collaboration with Candelapas Associates Architects and Stasia Property Limited for the building located at 72-84 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, Janet Laurence created The Breath in Glass in 2022.

Made from colour inserted laminated glass, atmospheric formations link the grounded world and the air moving above the earth’s surface. The work bleeds between the inside and the outside, bringing the changing tree foliage into ephemeral glass veils. The Breath in Glass creates a cloud like atmosphere, bringing in the colour of the trees outside and introducing those ephemeral colours into the glass. The work creates elemental and fugitive spaces that express the ephemeral through a language of veiling, transparency and translucency to form enmeshed environments. These slowed spaces express porosity and fluidity and a fusion with the environment. There are no boundaries but membranes. The Breath in Glass creates a way of seeing. The veiling and layering of colour creates a sense or a memory of something diffused appearing and disappearing like clouds.

HEAR THE PLANT SONG
AUSTRALIAN TAPESTRY WORKSHOP COMMISSION FOR PRIVATE COLLECTION, 2020

Hear the Plant Song is the second tapestry designed by artist Janet Laurence for the Australian Tapestry Workshop, was cut from the loom in June 2020 by Andrew and Cathy Cameron. The Cameron's commissioned the tapestry for their private collection of Australian contemporary art.

Distinctive, complex and beautiful, the Hear the Plant Song tapestry was hand-woven over 1300 hours by ATW weavers Chris Cochius, Amy Cornall, Cheryl Thornton and Sue Batten.

The fragility of the natural environment drives Laurence's international art practice. Across photography, sculpture, video and installation, she explores the deep interconnection of life forms and ecologies. The design allowed the artist to build on her knowledge of the way the ATW weavers can transform a digital image into a tapestry. Hear the Plant Song invites the viewer to submerge themselves in a subaqueous like undergrowth. The design is a composite digital image that draws on Laurence's extensive image archive, layered with scans of paint dragged on glass resulting in an ethereal, transparent effect.

Reflecting on the commissioning process, Mr Cameron noted “the trust placed in the weavers by Janet, to not copy, but transform her design into tapestry was a process that has been so interesting to observe. We are thrilled with the result, and we look forward to living with and contemplating Hear the Plant Song for many years to come.”

LISTEN, TO THE SOUND OF THE PLANTS
AUSTRALIAN TAPESTRY WORKSHOP COMMISSION FOR PRIVATE COLLECTION, 2017

Listen to the Sound of Plants was designed by Janet Laurence as a private commission in 2017. Comprised of images of plants from Laurence's extensive visual archive, the tapestry considers our human relationship to the natural world.

For more than 30 years Laurence has explored the interconnection of the natural word - animal, plant, mineral - through her multi-disciplinary practice. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, she has employed diverse materials to explore the environmental challenges we face today. Creating immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between all living forms, Laurence’s work occupies the liminal zones where art, science, imagination and memory converge.

The translation of digital image to tapestry provided a challenge for the weavers as they navigated the reflective surface elements of the design. Through very subtle colour mixing techniques and by employing many tones that are close together, the weavers were able to achieve a soft watery effect.

THE MATTER OF THE MASTERS
11 November 2017 - 18 February 2018
Art Gallery of New South Wales

DEEP BREATHING, RESUSCITATION FOR THE REEF
2015
Artists 4 Paris Climate, Grand Palais, Paris

TARKINE (FOR A WORLD IN NEED OF WILDERNESS)
2011
Duraclear, acrylic, mirror, stainless steel wire
Macquarie Bank Foyer, London

RESUSCITATION GARDEN (FOR AN AILING PLANT) 
2011
Mesh, laboratory glass, acrylic, mirror, several plant species, seeds, water, medicinal tubing, salts, minerals, various fluids, organza wrapped botanic specimens, rice flour, plywood floor
Hong Kong Art Fair Artist Project, Courtesy of Cat Street Gallery

IN MEMORY OF NATURE
2010 - 2012
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL
2003
Engraved granit, bronze
Hyde Park Corner

THE BREATH WE SHARE
2003
Glass, steel, ceramic-fired screenprint, silver birch trees
Sidney Myer Commemorative Sculpture - Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria.

49 VEILS
1998
Stained Glass in polished aluminium frames
Central Synagogue, Sydney