Joanne Laws

Communal Observances

Joanne Laws

Below are the disenchanted holidaymakers,

who have little time to bother

with the enigmatic young swimmers,

gliding over their heads.

Cnuasach: Deep Mapping

Over decades, the artist embarks on faithful departures from one painting in search of the next, never derailed by looming interpretations but content with deeper truths that overwrite such fractal commentary. Bodies of work accumulate as clusters, yet definitive meaning is shrouded and encoded – undecipherable, even to her.

Loose Parts – A Response to Anna Spearman’s Solo Exhibition at Roscommon Art Centre

If we were to observe the secret lives of art objects, we would find that they oscillate at different frequencies, depending on their environment. In the studio setting, sculptures are playfully coaxed into form, through fluid processes of material accumulation and subtraction, testing and reworking.  Preceding both narrative and the imposition of meaning, these provisional forms come into being through loops of energetic feedback, according to the experimental impulses and urgencies of their maker. Conversely, in the more formal context of a gallery or museum, art objects tend to accrue a more solidified and fixed status, by nature of their public display. Here, artifacts are classified, arranged and presented according to the institution’s ontology, which serves to shape our understandings and interpretations of the objects on view.

What is a painted curve, only a broad sweep of the arm? Offering the simplest form of composition, the curve moves through a human history of mark-making like a timeless signature – from spiraling Neolithic carvings to the sacred geometry of Christian iconography. Whether interrogating interior spaces or unifying distinct works along similar sightlines, the compositional curve can trigger a multitude of relations, not least in how the viewer is positioned.