Laura New
If you have ever read the very first edition of Grimms fairy tales (1812/15) you will have noted their distinct lack of embellishment, the clumsiness in their multiple transcriptions and the flippancy of tragic, grotesque and brutal endings. Repunzel is impregnated, Snow White’s real mother is the one trying to kill her, the devils wife outwits her husband in exchange for nightly beatings and cannibalism, child murder and domestic slavery are rife.
Laura’s work depicts snapshots of fairytales without a story, hints of characters frozen in suspense of a potential horror. They are uncomfortable and odd. Her work is primarily created in pen and ink on both two and three dimensional paper structures including a small series of miniature dioramas that are lit from the inside. There are flickering fires, lights in foreboding houses in the woods and white noise tv’s in the home of the three bears.
In addition to these Laura has taken the theme of ‘It’s a Pattern’ and created a series of prints exclusive to Art Car Boot Fair using the randomised processing of AI. Beginning with one of her original ink drawings, she has made a series of decisions using AI to create a pattern of individual new images sourced from the original. The pattern is eternal and can be minutely changed to further the series forever. What has been created are strange, curious and lonely characters in bleak and desolate landscapes. Isolated and abandoned children amidst creatures that lurk somewhere between charming and terrifying.
