LOCO MOTO ART

Laura Lee Coles: Conveyance[S]

Photo:  Keith Martin

Conveyance[S] is a three channel video installation (silent) using birch trees at Tatlow
Park as projection screens by way of battery operated LCoS pico-projectors.

Deep underneath the ground of Tatlow park lies massive forms of volcanic rock. Approximately 180 – 100 million years ago the Kitsilano area was formed by volcanic activity, commonly known as the Huntington Formation and the Kitsilano Formation.

Viewers are invited to reminisce this former landscape by experiencing images of the
different forms and patterns of flowing molten lava.

As a contemplative ambient video installation, Conveyance[S] also draws upon the rich multi-cultural symbolism of the birch tree and that of fire to inspire metaphorical impressions. In many cultures and folklore, the birch symbolizes a new beginning, renewal and purification, as does fire.
While the lava images stimulate thoughts of the primordial, the beginning; the trees are stationary, that is, the tree is an anchor, the axis mundi, representing the universal concept that links the heavens (consciousness) to the earth.

About the Artist & Curator:

Laura Lee Coles has been a multi-disciplinary artist for over 30 years working in performance art, music, installation [both gallery and site-specific] photography and video. She has worked as a consultant in environmental education in the United States during the 1990's. During this time her environmental education and trash art
installations were commissioned and contracted by galleries, municipalities, theatres,
dance companies and festivals. She is a voting member of the Screen Actors
Guild/AFTRA, and holds a BA in Modern Dance and Music from former Loretto Heights College, (Regis College Custodian of Records) and an MA in Communications, Art and Technology from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

Laura is currently interested in using solar-energy and portable energy systems for displaying digital arts in natural setting and for the study
and exploration of human interaction. As a
form of arts-based research, Laura questions whether different experiences of
technology in nature can subvert preconceived notions of the human-nature and nature-technology relationship.

In 2006, Laura started working with a digital camera for the first time. In 2008 – 2010
she exhibited her photographic works in small municipal galleries in Canada and the
United States, including the Moses Lake Museum and Art Center, Washington. Several
of her photographic works are now in private collection. Her recent video work has been
screened at international film festivals such as Videoholica in Varna, Bulgaria, and at the
Sardinia Film Festival in Sardinia, Italy, and by multi-media aerial dance company, OTO
Dance of Tucson, Arizona.