27 April - 27 May 2006
35 Heddon Street, London W1
Robots in the garden, lions, hunters, romance and war are some of the images in Laura Owens’ new work, her influences ranging from DADA performance to Hindu reliefs. Elsewhere she has broken away from the fine arts to delve into wallpapers and textiles.
Beyond the beauty of Owens’ paintings and drawings is a constant questioning of the chosen media. Her magpie-like approach to sources is echoed in her application of paint and the arrival of foreign elements in her collages. Evident too is an unashamed pleasure in ornamentation and a delight in pictorial elegance, which affords decoration a new dignity. Owens combines abstract elements with representational ones to create a highly personal vocabulary - a vocabulary which translates into an elaborate, elegant and quietly exuberant whole.