LOUD SPIRITS ︎︎ LAURA GRACE FORD
LOUD SPIRITS ︎︎ LAURA GRACE FORD
LOUD SPIRITS
06 Nov- 20 DEC
OPENING 5 NOV
LAURA GRACE FORD
Loud Spirits is an exhibition of new work by British multidisciplinary artist Laura Grace Ford, presenting an installation of paintings and a sound work made in collaboration with filmmaker and performance artist Noah Bador.
Working across writing, drawing, painting and sound, Ford’s work examines the city, its urban spaces, memories, and the lived experiences found within its margins. Expanding on psychogeography and hauntology, Laura’s practice is grounded in her use of both walking and writing to engage with the spatial and socio-political.
Loud Spirits takes its title from the English translation of ‘Poltergeist’ a German word which means ‘noisy spirit’, or ‘loud ghost’. It implies a haunted, persistent and direct encounter with something returning from the past that interferes with the physical present.
Ford stages the gallery as a temporary, liminal space - whitewashing the walls and constructing an open wooden stud structure throughout. Reminiscent of half-built corridors and rooms, Ford uses the structure to display a suite of new paintings.
Executed in a distinct purple -and- pink colour palette, the paintings form a series of domestic interiors and still-life compositions imbued with a literary quality. Sketchy brushwork, washes of neon colour, and formal composition frame detailed painting that give focus to the subject matter of each.
Though devoid of people, each painting depicts a snapshot in time, or memory of a lived life - an unmade bed with sunlight partially alighting on crumpled sheets; a still life of heaped clothes with discarded boots and a spirit bottle ; a cropped scene of the street with acts of graffiti and torn posters.
Some of these paintings are constructed composites, made up from an archive of drawings and photographs of interiors and places collected by the artist, whilst others are taken directly from real life; being portraits of the artist’s flat and studio, blurring the distinction between realist fact and romanticised fiction.
A new sound work is installed as a 5:1 multi-channel spatial sound piece. Composed from field recordings of the city and mixed with warped loops made from distorted song tracks, it is overlaid with a narrated psychogeographic text written by Ford and generated through her drifts and walks around London.
The story, magical realist and diaristic in tone speaks to a sense of transition and transformation. Taking place on Bonfire Night it describes a woman’s night time journey that ends in a squat party on the city edge. The narrator describes their existential relationship to a changing London and their memories of it. Whilst the city is a setting for drama, its physical streets, landmarks and features of the city are simultaneously protagonists, intimately intertwined with the lives of the characters who inhabit it.
Laura Grace Ford (b 1973 Halifax, West Yorkshire) is a London based artist and writer. Expanding ideas around psychogeography, hauntology and the dérive, her work interrogates the psychic contours of urban space with a particular focus on subcultural scenes, marginal political networks and UK club culture.
She completed an MA in Painting at the RCA in 2007, and holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art. In 2011 Ford's zine Savage Messiah, was published Verso and reissued in 2020. Part fragmented novel, part collage, the book is both a polemic against the marginalisation of the city’s working class and an exploration of the cracks that open up in urban space.
Ford's work is held in public collections and is on the UK GCSE and A level syllabus. She has contributed to many publications including The White Review, Frieze, Art Review, Afterall and Dazed, as well as numerous academic journals. She exhibits and teaches internationally, and is currently a lecturer at Goldsmiths College London and Somerset House Studios resident. Exhibitions include 'The Horror Show' Somerset House 2022, 'An Undimmed Aura', Somerset House, 2020; Alpha/Isis/Eden at The Showroom, London 2017; Itinerant Code, Tensta Konsthall, 2015; Ruin Lust, Tate Britain, 2014; Recording Britain, V&A, 2012; Anarchy Unmasked, British Library, 2014; Soft Estate, Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2013 and Spacex, 2013; Desire Lines, Caja Madrid, Barcelona, 2012; There is a Place, New Art Gallery Walsall, 2012; Orbitecture, Focal Point Gallery, Southend, 2011; and Poster Sites, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2010.
Noah Bador is an artist and filmmaker based in NE London. He works with sound collage, moving image and language to navigate the city.
Working across writing, drawing, painting and sound, Ford’s work examines the city, its urban spaces, memories, and the lived experiences found within its margins. Expanding on psychogeography and hauntology, Laura’s practice is grounded in her use of both walking and writing to engage with the spatial and socio-political.
Loud Spirits takes its title from the English translation of ‘Poltergeist’ a German word which means ‘noisy spirit’, or ‘loud ghost’. It implies a haunted, persistent and direct encounter with something returning from the past that interferes with the physical present.
Ford stages the gallery as a temporary, liminal space - whitewashing the walls and constructing an open wooden stud structure throughout. Reminiscent of half-built corridors and rooms, Ford uses the structure to display a suite of new paintings.
Executed in a distinct purple -and- pink colour palette, the paintings form a series of domestic interiors and still-life compositions imbued with a literary quality. Sketchy brushwork, washes of neon colour, and formal composition frame detailed painting that give focus to the subject matter of each.
Though devoid of people, each painting depicts a snapshot in time, or memory of a lived life - an unmade bed with sunlight partially alighting on crumpled sheets; a still life of heaped clothes with discarded boots and a spirit bottle ; a cropped scene of the street with acts of graffiti and torn posters.
Some of these paintings are constructed composites, made up from an archive of drawings and photographs of interiors and places collected by the artist, whilst others are taken directly from real life; being portraits of the artist’s flat and studio, blurring the distinction between realist fact and romanticised fiction.
A new sound work is installed as a 5:1 multi-channel spatial sound piece. Composed from field recordings of the city and mixed with warped loops made from distorted song tracks, it is overlaid with a narrated psychogeographic text written by Ford and generated through her drifts and walks around London.
The story, magical realist and diaristic in tone speaks to a sense of transition and transformation. Taking place on Bonfire Night it describes a woman’s night time journey that ends in a squat party on the city edge. The narrator describes their existential relationship to a changing London and their memories of it. Whilst the city is a setting for drama, its physical streets, landmarks and features of the city are simultaneously protagonists, intimately intertwined with the lives of the characters who inhabit it.
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Laura Grace Ford (b 1973 Halifax, West Yorkshire) is a London based artist and writer. Expanding ideas around psychogeography, hauntology and the dérive, her work interrogates the psychic contours of urban space with a particular focus on subcultural scenes, marginal political networks and UK club culture.
She completed an MA in Painting at the RCA in 2007, and holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art. In 2011 Ford's zine Savage Messiah, was published Verso and reissued in 2020. Part fragmented novel, part collage, the book is both a polemic against the marginalisation of the city’s working class and an exploration of the cracks that open up in urban space.
Ford's work is held in public collections and is on the UK GCSE and A level syllabus. She has contributed to many publications including The White Review, Frieze, Art Review, Afterall and Dazed, as well as numerous academic journals. She exhibits and teaches internationally, and is currently a lecturer at Goldsmiths College London and Somerset House Studios resident. Exhibitions include 'The Horror Show' Somerset House 2022, 'An Undimmed Aura', Somerset House, 2020; Alpha/Isis/Eden at The Showroom, London 2017; Itinerant Code, Tensta Konsthall, 2015; Ruin Lust, Tate Britain, 2014; Recording Britain, V&A, 2012; Anarchy Unmasked, British Library, 2014; Soft Estate, Bluecoat, Liverpool, 2013 and Spacex, 2013; Desire Lines, Caja Madrid, Barcelona, 2012; There is a Place, New Art Gallery Walsall, 2012; Orbitecture, Focal Point Gallery, Southend, 2011; and Poster Sites, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2010.
Noah Bador is an artist and filmmaker based in NE London. He works with sound collage, moving image and language to navigate the city.