Laura Woodward. Juried Artist
SAE
Artist Statement
‘Planet’ focuses on the interplay between water, air, and light. The water-filled sphere acts as a lens, a light-focusing tool – a means of shifting perception and understanding. Air bubbles disturb its surface, generating visual manifestations of cause and effect. At its most basic, ‘Planet’ is a semi-spherical body of water in which we can visually understand interplays between light, curvature and refraction.
In another reading, ‘Planet’ muses upon scale and complexity. The sphere is the fundamental form that emerges when equal pressure is applied – as with small water droplets falling through space, or, at a vastly different scale – both spatial and temporal – with the effect of gravity on planets. The sphere is the planet on which we stand, the moon that we see, the sun that gives us light and warmth. Equally, water – transparent, almost tasteless, and barely considered as we drink or bathe – is the fundamental life-blood of our world.
Another possibility is that ‘Planet’, with its stainless steel, clean white engineering plastics, and hoses, is an experimental life-support machine, an incubating system in which some new biological thing is coming into being.
In these ways, ‘Planet’ speaks to multiple possible readings, of differing physical scales, layered timescales, and to inter- and intra-dependent levels of systematic complexity.
About the artists
Laura Woodward lives and works on Djaara country near Castlemaine, Victoria. She has been creating sculptural kinetic installations for several years. Woodward’s work broadly focuses on kinetics, systems, and networks, considering the impact of individual elements in larger complex systems. The movements in the artworks are often powered by water, and inherently engage with light and sound. Woodward explores why our bodies respond to movement, and how movement in artwork can expand possibilities for audience engagement and accessibility.
Over the past few years this focus has expanded somewhat, as she has started to explore the systems of human experience through her work. Recent projects have considered, often obliquely, areas such as parenthood, life-giving, relationships, and death. These considerations have manifested in kinetic sculptures, installations, animations, drawings and photographic works.
Woodward’s work has been nationally recognised through solo exhibitions, significant group exhibitions, prizes, grants, and public commissions. Of recent note was her inclusion in “Floating Land: Us and Them”, Australia’s premier art in the environment event, in 2023; a Creative Victoria Creator’s Fund grant in 2022; and winning the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture Rural and Regional Development Award in 2020. She completed her PhD in kinetic sculptural practice at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne, in 2014.
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