Janet Laurence
Born: Sydney, NSW
Lives and works: Sydney and Berry, NSW
Artist Statement
The Court Requiem for Nature, 2025
Veils silk voile, Printed grosgrain ribbon, wire, sound, video.
Requiem: Nicole Smede (composition and words )
Voices: defendant: Lara Bouris; Judicial: Stephen Fenely
Video editing: Gary Warner. Sound: Damian Lane, Gotaro Uematsu
For a long time my practice has centred on nurturing a deeper, more intimate relationship between humans and the natural world ,one that is rooted in attention, care and love about which I feel passionately .
Throughout the capitalist and colonial systems nature has been treated as a resource to be exploited rather than a living system with its own intrinsic value Silenced and sidelined. The natural world has endured centuries of degradation, bringing us to a point of ecological crisis and extinction.
We are now facing the urgent need to recognise the rights of the more than human world trees plants birds animals have as much right to exist in flourish as we do my work seeks to make this truth visible and felt.
For this exhibition, I present sculpture and performative installation that stages a symbolic case for the rights of nature. The opportunity to install in the historic Berry courthouse enables the development of this work to create a site where nature is given the voice, a poetic and ethical counterpoint to the forces that have long silenced it.
This enables me to extend my work into a fuller expression merging advocacy art and ritual for that honours the living world and calls for its protection and rights.
About the Artist
Janet Laurence is a leading Sydney-based artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. Her practice examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world. She creates immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between organic elements and systems of nature. Within the recognized threat of climate change she explores what it might mean to heal the natural environment, fusing this with a sense of communal loss and search for connection with powerful life-forces. Her work is included in museum, university, corporate and private collections as well as within architectural and landscaped public places.
Laurence has been a recipient of Rockefeller, Churchill and Australia Council fellowships; recipient of the Alumni Award for Arts, UNSW; is currently a visiting fellow at the NSW University Art and visiting fellow of the 2016/2017 Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) fellowship; and artist in residence at the Australian Museum; She was the Australian representative for the COP21/FIAC, Artists 4 Paris Climate 2015 exhibition and in 2019 she had a major solo survey exhibition at the MCA and in 2020 at the Yu Hsiu Museum of Art in Taiwan. She was the 2021 Recipient of the Antarctic Fellowship and was represented in the Biocenosis 21 exhibition with IUCN Congress for Biodiversity Marseilles France.
Janet will also be part of our Artist Panel at 2pm on Saturday 14 June in the Berry School of Arts. Tickets: $10. More info and tickets here.
This work was made possible by The Curtis Foundation.
