Janet Laurence

Janet Laurence (born 4 March 1947) is an Australian artist, based in Sydney, who works in photography, sculpture, video and installation art. Her work is an expression of her concern about environment and ethics, her "ecological quest" as she produces art that allows the viewer to immerse themselves to strive for a deeper connection with the natural world.

1994 Laurence completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales.

2007 Laurence was the subject of John Beard's winning entry for the Archibald Prize sponsored by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The portrait features Laurence in a moment of reflection, captured in black and white, but textured with light and shade. The pair are close friends and the collaboration lends itself to a sense of double portraiture with the artist-as-subject.

2007-2009 She served on the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council

Work

Lawrence has made small works, but increasingly she has focused on large, outside works that are described as immersive, and use such natural materials as minerals and oxides, living plant matter, corals, taxidermy birds, and more.

She is cited as stating that the acceptance of installation art in Australia began in 1991 when she was commissioned to create the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Canberra War Memorial. The work, created in conjunction with the architectural firm Tonkin Zulaikha, consists of four pillars of different materials that soar upward in the hall of memories.

Her focus on science began in 1990 when she began to use metascience to better understand the ideas about transient and transformative nature.

In the early 2000s her work became increasingly political as well as poetic, as she intentionally began to focus on the triangle of artist, artwork and viewer. The viewer increasing became part of the artwork as they could look through and walk through installations.

Australian War Memorial, London (in collaboration with TZG Architects)

Tarkine for a World in Need of Wilderness Macquarie Bank London. The Tarkine is a wilderness area in Tasmania, Australia that is a World Heritage Site.

In the Shadow, Sydney 2000 Olympic Park, an installation along a creek of various rods to symbolize water testing. On her own website, Janet explains: The work aims to reveal the transforming chemistry of water remediation by creating a poetic alchemical zone as a metaphor for the actual transformation of Homebush Bay from its degraded contaminated industrial past into a green and living site for the future.

The installation is designed to be informative with regard to the environmental history of the site, but also to be a quiet place, a place of contemplation.

Elixir, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan; This is a wooden traditional Japanese house that incorporates a glass panel screen printed with poured paint. as well as plant and fluids, blown-glass vials, plant extracts steeped in shochu, and laboratory glass. It is a permanent installation.

Memory of Lived Spaces, T3 Terminal Changi Singapore. This work blends architecture with nature. Photographic panels are overlaid with painted sheets of glass.

Laurence was the Australian representative to the United Nation’s Convention on Climate Change in late 2015. Her work, Deep Breathing Resuscitation for the Reef (Australia Museum) focused on the fragility of the Great Barrier Reef—a World Heritage Site—because of climate change. The critically acclaimed installation used pigment as well as acrylic boxes and laboratory glass to enclose wet specimens and coral. |author=|title=|source=

Collections

Laurence's works are held in a number of collections including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Seibu Collection, Tokyo; World Bank Collection, Washington DC; University of New South Wales, Sydney; University of Western Australia, Perth.

Exhibitions (solo and group)

1981: First solo exhibition: Notes from the Shore, Central Street Gallery, Sydney. 2010: Handle With Care: 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia 2010: Waiting, 17th Biennale of Sydney: The Beauty of Distance – Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney 2010: In the Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2012: In Memory of Nature, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2012: After Eden, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney 2012: Negotiating this World, NGV, Melbourne 2013: SCANZ: 3rd Nature, New Plymouth, New Zealand 2013: Animate/Inanimate, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healsville, VIC 2014: The Skullbone Experiment: A Paradigm of Art and Nature, Launceston Museum, Tasmania, Australia 2014: What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me, FAS Contemporary, London 2014: Blood and Chlorophyll, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Australia 2015: Till its Gone, Islanbul Modern, Turkey 2015: Deep Breathing 2015 Artists 4 Paris Muséum National D’Historie Naturelle, Paris 2016: H2O Waterbar, Paddington Reservoir Gardens NSW

Permanent site-specific works

2003: Elixir, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Japan, permanent installation 2003: The Breath We Share, Sidney Myer Bendigo Art Gallery, Vic 2006: Waterveil, CH2 Building for Melbourne City Council, Melbourne 2011: Tarkine (For a World in Need of Wilderness), Macquarie Bank, London, UK

Awards and grants

1995: Royal Australian Institute of Architects ‘Lloyd Rees Award for Urban Design’ for First Government House Place, Sydney, in collaboration with Fiona Foley and Denton Corker Marshall Architects 1996: Alice Prize, Alice Springs, NT 1997 Rockefeller Fellowship