Lives and works between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania & Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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At the intersection of art, critical theory, politics, and medicine, my practice reflects an ongoing rumination into the relationship between chronic illness and feminist action. With a focus in autotheoretical methodologies, practice, performance, and product emerge as indistinguishable elements that resist a linear or hierarchical value. Casting and capturing pieces of myself in poetic and diaristic texts, sculpture, and lens-based performance, I enact rituals of self-imposed objectification where the asomatous is somatically shed and agency reclaimed. Object and image compose self-referential installations, the same body castings, objects and textiles commingling as physical sculpture as photographic prop.
“Body Double” (2019)
Installation view with photo diptych “Of my presence as if catching a stranger’s wave” (2019)
Plaster, concrete, resin, silicone, pigment, fishnet stocking, wood, paint
55 x 80 x 38 inches
“Bound Up in White Fishnet” (2019)
Installation view
Archival photographic print
24 x 36”; framed: 26 x 38”
“Skin Suit [sculpture]” (2020)
Installation view
Silicone, resin, pigment, acrylic mirror, cotton cord, steel hanging apparatus & hardware
60 x 42 x 16”
“Skin Suit [sculpture]” (2020)
Detail 1
Silicone, resin, pigment, acrylic mirror, cotton cord, steel hanging apparatus & hardware
60 x 42 x 16”
“Skin Suit [sculpture]” (2020)
Detail 2
Silicone, resin, pigment, acrylic mirror, cotton cord, steel hanging apparatus & hardware
60 x 42 x 16”
“Skin Suit” (2020)
Variations One, Four and Seven from a series of eleven images.
Tinted silicone embedded into the fibres of inkjet prints on habotai silk, & copper pipe
Silk prints 28x 35”, Mounted 28 x 35 x 6” ea.
“Bed of Nails” (2020 – )
Durational sculpture; 2021 documentation
Stripped mattress form, aloe vera cast in pigmented resin, wire, light, & community healers
Dimensions variable
“Bed of Nails” (2020 – )
Durational sculpture; 2021 documentation;
Detail
Stripped mattress form, aloe vera cast in pigmented resin, wire, light, & community healers
Dimensions variable
“Harness for Self-Reflection” (2021)
Installation detail
Inkjet prints on habotai silk, copper, cotton cord, acrylic mirror
116 x 116 x 85”
“en- /un- /-en” (2020)
Installation detail
Inkjet prints on silk imaging the interior of aloe vera moulds, copper pipe & fittings, moulding & body casting silicone, resin, pigment, beeswax, flocking fibre
Dimensions variable
Artist Biography
Laura Hudspith holds a BFA from Concordia University and is pursuing her MFA at Carnegie Mellon University. She has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in both Canada and the United States, notably with solo exhibitions at This Month Only, and Project Gallery, Toronto; and such residencies as the James Black Gallery, Vancouver; Wreck City, Calgary; and the Red Lodge Clay Center, Montana. Hudspith’s work has received recognition from national and international granting bodies including the Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and the Studio for Creative Inquiry.
