INTERROGATING THE REAL

Laura Buckley - Buckley is an artist who stumbled across her highly successful installation method involving film and structure, when investing in a film camera to document the memories with her daughter.

I found one interview with her which I found particularly interesting.

Veronica Simpson: I was intrigued by a description of your early years, growing up in a small town in Galway, attending a convent school. Aside from the obvious exposure to religious imagery, what exposure did you have to art as a child that made you think you wanted to become an artist?

Laura Buckley: I wasn’t used to visiting galleries, so my kind of interest in art was very much pop culture, such as the very early guitar bands, early electronic music and that visual imagery of music video, which I work with now, but very escapist. It was very much about coming back from school and getting into my room and recording songs from the radio, then playing them back. But I really enjoyed the intimacy of making imageryand making something meaningful and connecting. Through sound and vision, you can connect with the viewer on different levels.

VS: It sounds as if you were more drawn to music at that point?

LB: Music, I loved, yes. I studied piano for many years and ballet, too, and was very into science and English. I loved to write. And now all of these things have fed back into my work, which is fantastic. My first films were silent. I didn’t intend to start making moving imagery until I became a mother and got a video camera for that reason. I was coming from painting and sculpture and installation and really breaking down the function of art and representation. And so the first films are silent because, as I say, my background doesn’t come from film. The sound gradually started coming in and now I collaborate a lot with musiciansI’m interested in and I also make my own music. I’ve done a couple of music videos for Plaid and New Young Pony Club. I enjoy the collaborative process because I do everything myself, really, apart from the fabrication … Otherwise, the filming and editing I do on my own and it can become quite isolating.

VS: How do you start compiling the images and sounds that eventually go to make up a piece? How do you shape these fragments as you go along?

LB: You just never really switch it off. That’s what happens. When I’m working on a show, I’ll start collecting clips and start playing with them. Generally, the installations are in movements or acts, and they’ll be focused on one or two psychological states. It often reflects where I am in my life.Some works are quite celebratory. An installation called Waterlilies, in 2010, for my first solo show, at Mother’s Tankstation in Dublin, was very melancholy. My second daughter was still a baby, and there are some very domestic sounds; then, I’m pushing it through this process that completely expands it to this heightened everyday reality, and abstracting reality, but just allowing … the freedom to see things in different ways.

I really liked how the artist said that she didn't really have a plan of what visual elements are going to be involved at the beginning of the piece however lets herself collect pieces over time. The fact that this way of collecting leads to the work being very representational of where Buckley is within her life is something I love about her work. It is very difficult to represent personal thoughts and emotions however I think this artist manages to do this very well.

Image result for laura buckley Related image

Bibliography:

https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/interview-shortlisted-jarman-award-nominee-laura-buckley/

https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/laura-buckley-interview-i-enjoy-watching-the-people-in-the-work-as-much-as-the-work-itself

Research

Confirm copying