Lauren Pirie

BIO

Lauren Pirie is a Toronto-based artist working in a range of media and scale, from intricate ink drawings to large-scale murals and sculptural installations. Her practice explores environments in relation to interconnection, desire, and healing; both as themes in her own artwork and through collaborating with other artists.

Pirie was a co-founder of grassroots art and environmental organization, The About Face Collective. She’s curated collective art experiences and community events, including recent exhibits at PRIDE and MOCA Toronto, and created site-responsive illuminated soft sculptural installations and public artworks; recently for DesignTO and Winter Light.

Pirie’s largest public installation to date received grant funding as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto's Year of Public Art 2021–2022 and will be installed in Spring 2022, bringing together some prominent past themes, and collaborators from across disciplines. Her painting work was shown at Maake Projects in Pennsylvania, and works from her ongoing collaborative series with lens-based artist Jah Grey were exhibited at Mayten’s Projects in Toronto in Fall 2021. Pirie is currently in residence at PADA studios in Lisbon, Portugal through December.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My drawings, paintings and sculptures illuminate inherent interconnectedness—human to human and beyond—as well as the deeply human desire—physical and spiritual—for connection to each other and the natural world. I’m interested in the common threads in our personal and global mythologies, in queer ecologies, our fears and our fantasies, and how our willingness to confront our shadows—individually and collectively—can lead to growth and healing. As my work evolves in scale and collaborative formats, I’ve been exploring ideas of emergence as observed in nature; in properties and behaviors which emerge when parts interact as a whole. I’m currently especially interested in the ways our capacity for intimacy can affect how we move through the world, as well as how the worlds that we’re able to imagine—whether natural or supernatural—can affect our capacity for intimacy. These themes, while timeless, feel especially relevant in our climate of heightened anxieties, rising temperatures, and, recently, physical distance.

Loyal to the natural and the supernatural, coiling shapes in my work softly reference serpents, which are often perceived as evil, but hold ties to the Earth Mother, creative energy, water, and the underworld, and meld fully here with surrealist anatomies. Desire for human connection and physical touch intertwines with a desire for physical and spiritual connection to the earth. Bodies assume and reflect the visual language of plants, or vice versa, and water acts as an escape in itself; a healing liquid to submerge ourselves in; a surface to dip below to confront our hidden selves.

Interview with Lauren Pirie

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? Who or what were some of your most important early influences?

A cliche answer maybe, but I think I was always an artist. As a kid, I set up a gallery for my drawings behind my grandma’s ottoman, built enchanted forest scenes and tree houses behind my other grandmother’s cottage, and shot music videos on vhs with my cousin. Some of my earliest influences probably came from kids book illustrations. I was a big fan of Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendack, and was really visually influenced by a lot of weird 80s movies like Labyrinth and Never Ending Story and Princess Bride. As I got older I think I absorbed the subconscious idea that I had to hone my creativity into some sort of practical career path and went through a lot of phases of thinking I’d landed on one. Elementary school was writing and then architecture, high school was music and fashion, then photography and graphic design and illustration, but visual fine art was a constant that I always came back to.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this place? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired aspects of your work?

Toronto is my home base and the community here has absolutely inspired me. I’m probably most directly influenced by Toronto artists — people whose work I get to see regularly, whose practice I know on some level, and who I get to interact with personally. I’m sure that’s the case for a lot of us, but a personal connection really adds an extra layer of impact for me. Toronto’s a small big city which can make us feel a bit insecure sometimes, I think, but it also feels like it keeps us within tiny degrees of separation, even if the work we’re making is very different. There’s something special about having such a wide range of work within reach.

I recently did a residency at PADA Studios in Portugal, and the influence of both the surroundings and the artists I shared space with there is strong in the work I came back with. My environment really affects my work and it helps to shift my location to breathe some new life into it (and myself) when I can.

Can you describe your studio space? What are some of the most crucial aspects of a studio that make it functional? Do any of these specific aspects directly affect your work?

My studio is in a second floor space above an auto detailer. It faces out onto the parking lot of what was a legendary little mall that’s about to become a cluster of condo towers. My studio has big windows, lots of natural light, and the energy of a few other artists working in the neighbouring spaces, and I’ve filled it with plants – all things that help keep my work and I going.

What is a typical day like? If you don’t have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

Oh, how I wish I could say I had a typical day (lol). In reality they vary a lot, but a good studio day often starts with some writing from home, some yoga or something to move my body, and walking into the studio in the late morning with a second coffee. It takes me a while to get into the production part of the day, but once I get going, I’ll stay into the evening. It comes in waves though. Sometimes there are weeks at a time where I feel like I’m writing about art more than making it; filling out applications and proposals and managing projects. But if I’m working up to a show or an install, I’ve been known to work constantly, for wild hours. I thrive on that pressure, but I’m getting too old for all-nighters. I’m always interested in ways to find more of a balance while also remembering to honor the natural flow.

What gets you in a creative mindset?

Moving. Or lying down (such a Taurus thing to say, but sometimes what I really need is a nap — some of my best ideas come from lying down). Being around and watching other people work. Being in water or surrounded by trees. Reading a brilliant piece of writing or watching an amazing film or seeing a good show. Starting.

What criteria do you follow for selecting materials? How long have you worked with this particular media or method?

I’ve worked on paper with watercolour, acrylic ink and pigment ink pens for ages, but recently, I’ve been more focused on acrylic paintings on canvas, and soft sculptures using textiles, stuffing and LED lighting. I’m always experimenting with new mediums, but it’s nice to have the old reliables that I feel most comfortable with to come back to. Watercolour and ink drawings now often serve as studies for larger paintings.

With the sculptures, I’m always playing with new textiles and lights and learning how they react to each other. At first I was just buying cheap LED strips online and using white fabric, so the piece would take on the colour of the lighting only when illuminated. I started to play with coloured textiles, and now I’m painting and dying them myself. It’s important to consider the fabric for both how it will hold colour and how it will show light, on top of the feel it gives the forms, and for outdoor work, the weather resistance. I went to fashion school years ago – some things I studied then that I never expected to apply have actually turned out to be pretty useful.

I’m also often in collaboration with different artists who have a deeper knowledge on specific material uses and I’m always learning a lot from them. My friend and collaborator, Phil Aaron Pax, has been an LED angel. He’s taught me a lot about my lighting, along with my dad who’s an electrician. I’m now working with much higher quality lighting materials, but I still love incorporating random finds, like these amazing amber LED strips I found in a bargain store in Portugal. During my residency at PADA there in the Fall I learned so much from the other artists, and especially from Tim, one of the directors, who is a production wizard and has a grasp on so many different materials. It was really exciting to be in that space and have someone around as a kind of production advisor. I started to merge my paintings and sculptures while I was there, which meant I had to build my own supports and stretchers. I’ve worked in art direction and curating, often on on-site build-outs and a lot of DIY events where you often need to figure out how to build stuff on the fly. I have some background working with wood, but Tim helped me figure out the best way to construct these pieces and do it more efficiently and well.

Can you walk us through your overall process? How long has this approach been a part of your practice?

My process usually starts with a lot of loose sketches in pencil or ink. I’ll pull some selects from the sketches and reference them several times until they take a more final form, which, these days, is most often a painting or textile sculpture. But the path is always different. There are always elements of chance and intuitive decisions interacting with more deliberate choices. I’ve started to hand-dye/paint the textiles I use to make the skins of my soft sculptures, and I love this process so much. It’s so loose in comparison to a lot of the other parts of my work, which can be meticulous, and even a bit… obsessive. I’ll work with large brushes on long pieces of fabric with watered-down colour, then drape the fabrics over objects to dry. Wind and sunlight play into the outcome just as much as the choices in colour and objects and draping. It helps me to trust and even delight in the forces outside of my control, which is a great practice in art and life. I usually have a vision for the final form of a sculpture, but once I construct and sew the elements and bring it together it often takes on a very different configuration. It’s something that’s been really interesting about working in three dimensions and especially with soft three-dimensional things. For me it’s like, the very technical part of it is done, and then there’s another round of intuitive process when the constructed forms adapt to whatever environment they’ll be living in. It’s similar with painting. I start with a sketch, but once I translate it to canvas it adapts and transforms. For efficiency, it helps if I have something more worked-out at the sketch stage, but it rarely goes that way, and giving space for spontaneous paint gestures to guide a piece allows it to take shape more organically, I think.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I think a lot about the inherent interconnectedness between us as humans, and between us and the more-than-human world. I think about how much we yearn for those physical and spiritual connections to each other and to the earth. I’m really interested in our ability to soften, and in our capacity for intimacy — how that capacity can affect how we move through the world. And how both the real and fantastical worlds that we’re able to imagine can affect our capacity for intimacy.

It feels like we’re especially starved for imagination lately. Like in this time of isolation so many of us have misplaced our ability to imagine something different — the only thing we can think to ask for is for things to go back to how they were, without questioning what shaped that existence. It’s easy to take what we’re familiar with as a given, but I think a lot about how we might reconsider the rigidity of those structures. We forget that we can and do adapt and evolve. I’m really interested in queer ecology for that reason. It shows us that even our understanding of nature and biology is malleable. Many of us have been socialized to view life in binaries, but things are rarely so distinct or dualistic, in nature (which, of course, we are part of).

Recently I’ve also been super interested in the occurrence of emergence, especially in properties in nature that emerge when individual beings or parts interact as a whole. So many other living things thrive by living communally. As humans, many of us are familiar with life in a system that encourages competition and stern individualism, while we crave community support, collaboration, and intimacy. But it’s hard to move toward that without first acknowledging the parts of ourselves that we’d rather hide. I think a lot about how confronting our individual and collective shadows can move us toward healing and growth, and the continuous and winding and complex nature of that process.

Some of the most constant recurring imagery in my work are the serpentine forms that merge with human bodies. They’ve become more ambiguous and less discernible from the human elements over time, but I continue to be fascinated by snakes. They can conjure desire and repulsion and fear at the same time, and speak to things in our lives and ourselves that we’re both attracted to and repulsed by. I’m really intrigued by the similarities and discrepancies between different interpretations of the snake as a symbol, especially in religion and mythology. It’s interesting to consider what understandings might be innate or visceral versus what’s instilled in us by way of dominant culture. We understand a snake’s form and movement as sensual, even though it’s so foreign to us as humans to move in that way; slithering, without appendages. When they meld and intertwine with human bodies, especially very sensory body parts, like feet and hands, the forms can lend themselves to a strong physicality and sense of touch.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

It’s become harder to say what is separate from my studio practice. It’s all related of course, but, yes, I’ve been thinking more and more about how important collaboration is to my practice. It’s something I’ve always gravitated toward in one way or another. In the past, I’ve been involved in some bigger projects that I would say were separate from my studio practice but relate to it, like art direction and curatorial projects. Recently I think that they’ve blurred more and more. A lot of my work these days is collaborative. Jah Grey and I showed some work from our ongoing collaborative series at Mayten’s Projects in Toronto in the Fall. We also collaborated with four dancers, who Jah filmed and photographed interacting with my soft sculptures, moving as a collective. In the Spring, I’ll be installing a large public project with four other artists and some community collaborators in Toronto for ArtworxTO. I’m working on a big public mural project and an accompanying short film in Windsor after that—my first official collaboration with my long time friend and work/studio-mate, Justyna Werbel. Since my work is so based around interconnection, the collaborative elements feel like an innate part of it.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

The beginning of the pandemic signaled a huge shift for me. Before that, a good chunk of my income had been coming from art directing and curating for art-based events, and of course, that whole world came to a quick halt. It was a challenge, for a lot of reasons, but also ended up shifting my focus and pointing me in what I think was the right direction for the long run. It was hard to do much at first, but once I was able to, I think having to navigate around the limitations of the time ended up allowing me to make the work I’d really been wanting to. I was already starting to work on more site-responsive installation and right before the pandemic hit, I’d installed my first outdoor piece. It definitely timed well in terms of being able to create things that were still accessible during Covid. It also just made me think a lot about what it was that was important to me, and really underscored some of the themes I’d been working with. Taking away the option of prioritizing jobs for money kind of freed up the space to make the work I would have been making otherwise. And in the end, I think that tends to be more successful work.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I’m definitely influenced as much by literature, film and music as by visual art. In terms of literature, I think magic realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and specifically, One Hundred Years of Solitude, have been significant for me, as well as science/ speculative fiction, especially recently. Octavia Butler (Parable of the Sower), Akwaeke Emezi (Freshwater), and Ursula K. Le Guin (The Carrier Bag Theory Of Fiction) have been standouts in my recent reading line-up. David Bowie (in all manifestations), and Frank Ocean (especially Blonde) are a couple of important musical inspirations, but there are so, so many from all ends of the musical spectrum. My friend A l l i e, who’s also a collaborator, and understands my work intuitively, put out an incredible record last year called Tabula Rasa. And I got a secret link to Jahmal Padmore’s album, Esparonto, which comes out in May, but has been on repeat in the studio. I’m also really influenced by music videos, and music that’s intrinsically linked to its visuals – Bjork and FKA twigs, and Gondry and Andrew Thomas Huang and their other collaborators are some important figures. Pussykrew directed a video for Oyinda’s Serpentine (which I love; surprise, surprise) that I always come back to and my friend Sammy Rawal makes some of the most mind-blowing music videos and visuals.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

I’m super excited about Na Liu. I shared a studio with Na in Portugal and it was incredible to see her work come together, and her ability to float between so many mediums while staying deeply rooted in this world she’s created. I’m always really excited about Toronto/ Canadian artists like Rajni Perera, Shary Boyle, Marigold Santos, Oluseye, Ambera Wellman, Oreka James, Dominique Fung, Sarah May Taylor, and Virgil Baruchel, who’s doing these paracord weavings and installations, and integrating furniture. Some exciting artists who’ve recently come onto my radar are Alexis Vanasse, Xenia Lucia Laffely, Andrea Wright, Jessica Burrinha, Cecilia Bengolea, and Eliska Konecna.

The first exhibition that comes to mind is Tau Lewis’s last show at Cooper Cole. The timelines of the last couple years are kind of a blur, but I think it was one of the first shows I saw after galleries reopened for the first time in Toronto. It felt pretty massive to be going to a show at all, and then the experience of Tau’s show was so extraordinary. I think we got the first viewing slot, so I hadn’t seen any images of the work at all at that point. They took us up to the project space which is in a storage unit in the building next to the gallery. We walked through these self storage hallways and landed at one of the generic blue doors they’re lined with. They unlocked a padlock and rolled open. I walked in and, honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting but I almost fell over. First of all, I hadn’t been to the project space before, and from he hall, would never have guessed it opened up to a space that size. And then I suddenly found myself staring up at this giant textile sculpture of Tau’s which occupied the space in a way that made it feel like it was going to slowly, softly push through the walls. It was pretty amazing to see at that time, and, of course, the fact she’s also working in large-scale soft sculpture is something that made it especially exciting for me. I first saw Tau’s work years ago when it was very different — I loved it then and it’s been amazing to see where she’s taken it.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

I’ve been trying to work with the mindset that I have to do ten things for one of them to be successful. This goes for artwork, but also to proposals and applications. It’s easy to get discouraged when you put all your energy into something that doesn’t come to fruition. Thinking of it as part of the necessary nine rejects for every one that works, eases the pressure. My friend Robyn, a writer, told me that she aims for 80% in all of her work. I think about that a lot. Letting go helps us make more, and making more helps the work.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

While I was in residence at PADA, I started to incorporate my sculptures into my paintings to create works on canvas with illuminated three-dimensional elements emerging from the surface. It’s something I've been planning for a while and I’m excited to continue to play with. I’d like to continue to push both my textile sculpture, and painting work independently, while also experimenting with their interconnection. I’m hoping to show them all together this year as an interdependent ecosystem of work, in a space that I can build a sort of world in.

I have those couple of collaborative public installations coming up in the Spring, and I’m working with a musician friend to create a sculptural costume and video for her. I’m excited to make more work for video and public scenarios, and for more collaborative projects in 2022.

To find out more about Lauren Pirie check out her Instagram and website.