Exhibition - November 21th - December 4th
Victoria Lawson’s visual practice investigates the possibilities for an artist’s embodied actions to intervene within the amorphous, technological field of tourism. Her artwork draws upon the expanse of tourism’s history and contemporary theories of its globalised politics to perform a deconstruction of the power of this contemporary field. Her recent paintings and sketches draw upon the wider field of billionaire leisure and its connections to the paradigms of power inherent in tourism’s construction. Unwittingly Covid 19 has given all of us the opportunity to rethink the damaging habit of long haul tourism and its ecologically disastrous future. Yachts and private planes are now contested sites at the forefront of the war in Ukraine as unimaginable Russian wealth for the few rather than the many though it's not just Russian wealth that is contested here. Neoliberal cultural tourism is also questioned via her work. Lawson’s 10, 29 x 21.5 pencil drawings of private planes, sourced from the internet, are pinned to the wall in a grouping and 15, 30 x 39.5 cm oil paintings on linen (six horizontal, 9 vertical are hung in a mixed line according to the overall larger image of a yacht they originally made up). The image was also sourced from the Internet.
OPENING EVENT - Saturday Nov 26th, 6-9 pm
A discussion with Caroline Austin will be held at 5 pm.