Interview with Lauren Darling
1. Please tell us something about your background and your art journey so far.
I am a multimedia artist, graduating this year with my BA in Fine art. I have studied art throughout my education, exploring many ways of creating. But I have found a preference for photography and ceramics, they are the two mediums I always come back to. During my degree, I have exhibited locally in several group exhibitions, alongside a few online exhibitions.
2. Describe what a normal day looks like as an artist.
As a student art became part of every day, and the facilities I had available to me made the possibilities of Ideas endless. However, now that I have graduated, the allotted time in the day for creating art has now swayed. As I am not a full-time artist, most of my day is spent at an evening job, fitting art into the in-between. With this change, I find most of my practice exists as ideas in notebooks, that I plan to develop. The balance between art and work will hopefully balance out but for now, smaller pieces I find fit better into my day-to-day.
3. Can you tell us more about the theme in your art and your inspiration?
Currently, I have been focusing on a theme of the female ‘issue’, exploring views on body image, from both the female gaze and considering the male gaze. The women that I create are observations of everyday women, trying to bring back a normalisation of the average body rather than the fixation on the edited body which has developed in society. Both of these factors combined, have resulted in the women I create having no heads, there is anonymity and a lack of individual identity, hopefully, this allows a greater relatability for my audience as well as a gentler reception of the bodies, they cannot gaze back at you.
4. How does your art life impact other parts of your life?
With the art I create stemming from my perspectives on life, I find that it encourages my views to develop. As I delve deeper into research to inform my practice, I find a greater understanding of the society around me. Similarly in sculpting the female body, I have developed a gentler response to observing myself and others.
5. Share your worst experience in the art world.
My worst experiences in the art world have come from a lack of wanting to understand the context of my work. Previously I have worked with menstrual blood and unsurprisingly met a lot of resistance to the use of the material. The taboo aspects surrounding the female experience have halted some viewers from even considering my art beyond the context of ‘gross’.
6. What are you working on at the moment and are there any upcoming events you would like to talk about?
I am currently working on expanding my series of female figures, intending to complete the alphabet, with a full roster of named women. There are some other works I am developing alongside this series, but a few of them may need more development so they might be slower to see the light of day.