Laura GILLAM 

Laura Gillam is a visual artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Mumirimina, in South Eastern Tasmania. She works predominately in painting and installation. Laura playfully combines popular motifs with her memories of adolescence and regional Tasmania, creating painted spaces and fluorescent assemblages that shift between flat surface and object.

 Since moving from the North West of Tasmania Laura has been interested in observing personal stories and ingenuities to re-imagine regional archetypes. Her work is informed by the ideas of anarcho-communities and mutual aid as she considers the stratification between rural and urban spaces.

 Her recent works re-construct mythologies from existing material, including Internet based imagery, classical and colonial paintings and Australian tourism and advertising content. She is interested in the way metaphors and iconographies are used as devices to organise power, often forming deceptive and despotic notions of collective national identity.

 Laura recently collaborated with Constance and inmates from the Ron Barwick prison creating a cardboard mountain exploring themes of place and isolation. She was the recipient of the Jim Bacon memorial scholarship and graduated with Honours from UTAS in 2018. She was the 2017 winner of the Tasmanian Portraiture Prize and has since exhibited across the state showing with various galleries and Artist Run Initiatives. Laura participated in the Artist in residence program at Obracadobra in Oaxaca, Mexico and is a board member at Good Grief, where she currently works as a studio artist.