Carol Laidler
Carol Laidler’s practice is located in the crack between writing and visual art. It is an exploration of the different ways this might be manifested. Working with writing, spoken word, sound, photography and moving image, her site-specific installations highlight the tensions between an inner personal space and the multiple voices that constitute the outer world. By working collaboratively, weaving together ideas and words from and with others, the work challenges notions of the single narrative and emphasizes possibilities of knowledge within conversation and connection.
Studio at Spike Island, Bristol. Member of: Space Place Practice, Bath Spa University; Network for Narrative Inquiry, University of Bristol; alldaybreakfast artist collective; Spike Associates; Bricks.
Worked on documentaries for Channel 4, with Steel Bank Films and Sheffield Film Coop, before setting up Iris Photography Agency based at Untitled Gallery (now Site gallery). Moved to Cologne in 1990 where she developed a practice of ephemeral installation.
Works
Beached
Installation in a municipal beach hut on Dawlish Warren, books, map, walk,
2016, made with Pat Jamieson.
“Fin whale
juvenile female
Beached – Dawlish 29.09.16
Umbilical cord still attached
It doesn’t appear to be a ship strike
It doesn’t appear to be an entanglement”
The Beach hut contained two deckchairs, a book of photographs and writing
from Flight, a book of photographs of a beached whale washed up on the
neighbouring beach while we were there and a map that guided the viewer to
two other points along the spit: Hide, where we wrote words on the blackboard
each day and Sanctuary, where we’d nailed individual words embossed in copper
onto a row of groynes coming up out of the sand:
– we – are – here – claiming – sanctuary –
This site-responsive work raises questions about migration, ownership and
territory, who is hiding and who or what is being protected.