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2016 'To tell Another's Story' exhibition, Australian Refugees Association CEO K Bickendorf, Lauryn Arnott with asylum seeker, Ho Da Brovayeh and her portrait of her at the Kerry Packer Gallery UNISA
Artwork traces turbulent history ARTS & CULTURE
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Excerpt from review on Arnott's 2015 SALA exhibitions...by Nicole Wedding INDAILY Adelaide Independent News Visual artist Lauryn Arnott’s experiences living in South Africa and Zimbabwe have strongly influenced the artwork in her 2015 SALA exhibitions. Arnott believes that looking to the past can help shed light on the future, and says her work focuses on the journeys and transformations people make when fleeing countries of conflict. Full article : http://indaily.com.au/arts-and-culture/2015/08/05/artwork-traces-turbulent-history/ Photo credit: The opening of the To Tell Another's Story exhibition organised by the Australian Refugee Asso, held at the Kerry Packer Gallery UNISA - Lauryn Arnott with refugee Safari Bahizire and her portrait of him Excerpt from review The Hills are Alive with Art...by Dr Christine Nicholls Flinders University, Adelaide On entering the exhibition space, on the back-facing wall, visitors are greeted by Lauryn Arnott’s marvelous mixed- media work, Commemorating the Unknown Pioneer Bride I & II. Arnott’s accomplished work is a form of homage to the German migrant women and girls who arrived in South Australia, chiefly between 1838 and 1888, to begin new lives......It was a difficult life and these young women had few rights. Strength of character (and of body) was de rigueur. This is reflected in the title of these works, Commemorating the Unknown Pioneer Bride I & II, which is an excellent riff on the ubiquitous commemorations of male valour (which are of course valid) and strength of body and character, but it is a comparatively rare occurrence to commemorate these qualities in anonymous young women. As Arnott explains: “... Whilst drawing the antique Black Wedding Dress in the Museum, I considered what Hahndorf was like 175 years ago, and the life of the un-known bride, who wore this dress. I saw the dress to be like an open chrysalis, an empty shell from which a woman has slipped away like the identity of the unknown bride.” Review on exhibition : Commemorating the Unknown Hahndorf Bride diptych |
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‘ When Two Worlds Collide ', Sidique Bah, SALT Magazine 2013
Lauryn Arnott is a unique individual whose intriguing background and history has left her feeling torn between two cultures.
We first met at the Voice of the Village Festival, staged by Mitcham City Council in October. Lauryn was reading a copy of SALT Magazine which was on display, and she introduced herself, saying “Hi, I’m also from Africa.”
She was eager to tell her story as a white African now living in Australia, but who has experienced life from unique perspectives in traumatic times, and even now, still feels the pull of the Africa she grew up in.
She is an artist who started drawing and painting at an early age in Zambia, continuing through her schooling in Zimbabwe and then later in South Africa, where she made the connection between art and life – using the canvas as a vehicle for expressing her thoughts about apartheid, injustice, and the politics of Africa.
For more.....http://www.saltmagazine.org/when-two-worlds-collide/
Linear Narratives: 2013
An exhibition assembled from artworks of Oliewenhuis Art Museum’s Permanent Collection.
Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
1 July – 1 September 2013.
Work produced by some of South Africa’s most celebrated artists is to be seen in this exhibition, showing from 1 July – 1 September 2013 on the first floor of the Main Building.
Arnott’s Lithographic heads from her ‘Contemplation Series’ appears on the Linear Narratives poster . Click on link to view her work. http://www.pelmama.org/ARNOTT.htm
complete catalogue - Pelmama
PELMAMA Permanent Art Collection
PELMAMA is an acronym for the "Pelindaba Museums of African and Modern Art", a project initiated by The Haenggi Foundation Inc., Johannesburg, South Africa, Switzerland , an Association not for Gain established in 1978, following on the Soweto riots. http://www.pelmama.org/
Migration & Transformation: A survey exhibition of drawings and prints from 1981-2011
Adelaide Fringe Festival 2011, South Australia
The Art of Lauryn Arnott’ excerpt from catalogue essay by Godwin Bradbeer, artist and Head Of Drawing RMIT University, Melbourne
It must be difficult for Lauryn to present within the Australian arts community without contextualizing her work within the fractured histories of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Lauryn is quick to respond to ideas that refer that paradox within her own arts practice and that of others and in a number of ways I can identify that this is significant for her and her work. Paradox I find to be quite a beautiful word and I have always resented that the conventional Christian upbringing of my youth never provided me with that word. The binary concept of good and bad, right and wrong, saved and lost, glorified and damned was foremost in too many aspects of my young life. The polemic states were absolute in their opposition and utterly without interface.
Lauryn’s work has been celebrated in a number of prestigious contexts that I should imagine will be known to the reader through other documentation, and she has addressed the debates and discourse of contemporary art and especially drawing in a number of academic and literary contexts. In addition to the conceptual intentions and technical accomplishment of her drawings, I must add that Lauryn brings an energy and immediacy to her work that is almost youthful. In an artist of maturity I consider this a very good sign and a promise that her important work will have continuity.
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" Lauryn Arnott presents some of the most powerful figurative work being made in Australia at present"
Chris Orchard, artist and Head of Drawing Adelaide Central School of Art
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It must be difficult for Lauryn to present within the Australian arts community without contextualizing her work within the fractured histories of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Lauryn is quick to respond to ideas that refer that paradox within her own arts practice and that of others and in a number of ways I can identify that this is significant for her and her work. Paradox I find to be quite a beautiful word and I have always resented that the conventional Christian upbringing of my youth never provided me with that word. The binary concept of good and bad, right and wrong, saved and lost, glorified and damned was foremost in too many aspects of my young life. The polemic states were absolute in their opposition and utterly without interface.
Lauryn’s work has been celebrated in a number of prestigious contexts that I should imagine will be known to the reader through other documentation, and she has addressed the debates and discourse of contemporary art and especially drawing in a number of academic and literary contexts. In addition to the conceptual intentions and technical accomplishment of her drawings, I must add that Lauryn brings an energy and immediacy to her work that is almost youthful. In an artist of maturity I consider this a very good sign and a promise that her important work will have continuity.
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" Lauryn Arnott presents some of the most powerful figurative work being made in Australia at present"
Chris Orchard, artist and Head of Drawing Adelaide Central School of Art
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Writers, writing on conflict and war in Africa, edited by Okey ndibe and Chengari Hove
Publication of essay and photographic documentation of the Journey Home drawing, 2009
Publication of essay and photographic documentation of the Journey Home drawing, 2009
Arnott, Lauryn. ‘Journey Home: suitcase or coffin?’ Writers, writing on conflict and war in Africa; co-edited by Okey Ndibe and Chengari Hove. Sponsored by the Nordic Africa Institute. Published by Adonis and Abbey Publishers, London, 2009. Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa - Adonis & Abbey ...
Review by Ikhide R Ikheeloa- EMAIL FROM AMERICA
Of Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa « Ikhide
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Original Skin: Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre, UNISA, 2008
Nexus Window Space August 2008
Lauryn Arnott's art works on show on the outside-inside wall of the Nexus Gallery. Source: The Advertiser
HAVING her works on show on the outside-inside wall of the Nexus Gallery couldn't better have suited Lauryn Arnott. "I love the idea of being on the margins," she declares.
"Nexus Wall Space is outside the gallery space and yet it is still inside the context of the gallery. It sits on the margins of inside and outside, much like me and the work I do." Born in Zambia and educated in South Africa and Zimbabwe, Arnott found herself in Adelaide after fleeing Robert Mugabe's violent regime. She and her husband were among the farmers targeted by the Mugabe land takeovers.
Here, after winning the 2006 Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize, she attracted the attention of South African-born Nobel Laureate John Coetzee who then opened her Masters show at the Adelaide Central School of Art, saying that her work "with such a jolt, transported me back to Africa".
The new showing is called Original Skin and its six works reflect the artist's observations on migration, birth and cultural status. Relations between power and vulnerability are thematic. "They offer no comfort, only the questioning of the relationship between victims and oppressors," she explains. Dark may be the thoughts, but Arnott ends with a note of optimism with a triptych, Death is a Womb, affirming life over death.
Samela Harris. ‘Artist says outside walls are for her’ The Advertiser August 20, 2008
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/the-margins-are-the-thing/story-e6freeu3-1111117241509
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Lauryn Arnott's art works on show on the outside-inside wall of the Nexus Gallery. Source: The Advertiser
HAVING her works on show on the outside-inside wall of the Nexus Gallery couldn't better have suited Lauryn Arnott. "I love the idea of being on the margins," she declares.
"Nexus Wall Space is outside the gallery space and yet it is still inside the context of the gallery. It sits on the margins of inside and outside, much like me and the work I do." Born in Zambia and educated in South Africa and Zimbabwe, Arnott found herself in Adelaide after fleeing Robert Mugabe's violent regime. She and her husband were among the farmers targeted by the Mugabe land takeovers.
Here, after winning the 2006 Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize, she attracted the attention of South African-born Nobel Laureate John Coetzee who then opened her Masters show at the Adelaide Central School of Art, saying that her work "with such a jolt, transported me back to Africa".
The new showing is called Original Skin and its six works reflect the artist's observations on migration, birth and cultural status. Relations between power and vulnerability are thematic. "They offer no comfort, only the questioning of the relationship between victims and oppressors," she explains. Dark may be the thoughts, but Arnott ends with a note of optimism with a triptych, Death is a Womb, affirming life over death.
Samela Harris. ‘Artist says outside walls are for her’ The Advertiser August 20, 2008
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/the-margins-are-the-thing/story-e6freeu3-1111117241509
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Crossing Over: Master of Visual Arts exhibition
Adelaide Central Gallery, South Australia
December 2006 – January 2007
Transcript of opening address by Nobel laureate author, John Coetzee
As Rod [Taylor, Head of the Adelaide Central School of Art] mentioned, Lauryn Arnott and I are from the same part of the world, Southern Africa. It is a little eerie to be opening an exhibition of hers here in South Australia, half a world away from our origins, a little eerie but a pleasure none the less. Not only are we are we from the same part of the world we are I discovered from the same institution. In the 1980’s Lauryn did her Post-graduate work at the Michealis School of Art, which is attached to the University of Cape Town. This was a time that I was teaching at that university. Our paths did not cross then as far as I know but I am very happy that they have crossed now. I first saw Lauryn’s work here in Adelaide as part of the Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize; a competition of younger artist’s from Australia and New Zealand, and her work really stood out in fact it took a first prize. It stood out for its’ inherent quality. It also stood out in my eyes because it also suddenly, and with such a jolt, transported me back to Africa.
The work in question, the entry for the competition, was called Journey Home. It is a charcoal drawing of a woman sitting very erect with a card board box on her head one leg crossed over the other, one hand on her hip. Waiting or resting, or both waiting and resting. I was struck by the monumentality of the image also by the strength and the patience and resolution that it gave off, also by its’ Africaness, the bare foot sole, the closed impassive look on the face. I can see something of Henry Moore in its conception. I am thinking of the sketches from his wartime London Underground studies, but this has been taken over and reconceptualized in Africa. The rest of the work on this show this afternoon is new to me. The work strikes me as strong and very disturbing. I am not sure that I have seen anything quite like it in Australia in the five years that I have been here. I am sure that you know that Lauryn Arnott came here to South Australia as a refugee from Zimbabwe, where she and her husband had been farming and where they had become one of the targets of the so-called ‘war veterans’ who implement land ‘take overs’ on behalf of the Mugabe government. I have the sense that she was more than a little traumatised when she arrived here. But I also have a sense that like a true artist she has succeeded in turning personal pain into art, at least that is the way in which I read a work like Clay Pigeon which is somewhere over there, as part of today’s exhibition.
I am convinced that the city of Adelaide and the country in general has done well in offering a home to a gifted artist who has much that is new and strange to say to us. It is a pleasure and a privilege to open this first exhibition of hers on Australian soil.
Thank you
John Coetzee
J. M. Coetzee awarded Lauryn the Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize
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Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize 2006
'Journey Home', Artdate, Adelaide Central School of Art
Association of Commonwealth Universities Art Prize 2006
Nobel Laureate presents student art prize
Universities Futures 2006 - conference of executive heads
Nobel Laureate and University of Adelaide staff member Professor J.M. (John) Coetzee was present on the first day of the Universities Futures conference to present the winners prizes in a special visual art exhibition and competition for tertiary student artists from across Australia. Professor Coetzee, who won the 2003 Nobel Prize for literature, is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide’s Discipline of English. He presented the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) prize of $5000 to Adelaide Central School of Art (affiliated with Flinders University) Master’s student Lauryn Arnott for her work “Journey Home”. The $3000 University of Adelaide runner-up prize was awarded to La Trobe University PhD student Donna Bailey for “The Ideal”.
Thirty-one artworks were submitted by a panel of judges from 64 entries. The exhibition - A Place in the World - was shown in Bonython Hall before and during the ACU conference. University of Adelaide Art And Heritage Collections manager Mirna Heruc said: “Visual arts and other cultural activities with the universities play an important role in their interaction with the broader community. Such activities have a significant impact on the social and cultural capital of society. The enthusiasm and variety of artworks is stunning and give viewers an insight into the way in which we perceive our own place in the world.”
Excerpt from Robyn Mills
‘Nobel Laureate presents student art prize’, by Robin Mills, volume 15, No 3, May 2006, Adelaidean, News from the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
https://formula-sae.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidean/issues/11341/news11352.html
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Picture Lauryn Arnott with John Coetzee; Nobel laureate author; at the award presentation of the 2006
Association of Commonwealth Universities ~ Visual Arts Prize.
Photograph by Dean Martin, courtesy of The Advertiser
Association of Commonwealth Universities ~ Visual Arts Prize.
Photograph by Dean Martin, courtesy of The Advertiser
Boycotting the 1981 South African Republic Festival Exhibition - celebrating 20 years of Apartheid Rule
Lauryn Arnott was born in Zambia and educated in South Africa. In 1981, as a young art student, the Durban Tech exhibited her work against her will, on the Republic Festival exhibition. Lauryn tore up her work rather than have it support the celebration of 20 years of apartheid rule by white artists only. As the article states the educational department was considering taking her to court for destroying state property, as her artwork was made in a state institution. Instead they dropped her marks so that she could not take up a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art in London. They did not support her anti-apartheid stand and therefore did not want her to represent South Africa overseas. The Michealis School of Art at the University of Cape Town, offered her a post-graduate scholarship on the basis of her work and her stand.
1981 Student, Lauryn Arnott with her art work that she destroyed in protest, as she did not support the Republic Art Festival exhibition- a whites only exhibition celebrating 20 years of Apartheid Rule. - Photographer from The Natal Mercury, Durban South Africa
