Laura Woodward
ISEA Bio(s) Available:
ISEA2024
Laura Woodward lives and works on Djaara country near Castlemaine, Victoria. She has been creating sculptural kinetic installations for several years. Woodward’s work broadly focuses on kinetics, systems, and networks, considering the impact of individual elements in larger complex systems. The movements in the artworks are often powered by water, and inherently engage with light and sound. Woodward explores why our bodies respond to movement, and how movement in artwork can expand possibilities for audience engagement and accessibility.
Over the past few years this focus has expanded somewhat, as she has started to explore the systems of human experience through her work. Recent projects have considered, often obliquely, areas such as parenthood, life-giving, relationships, and death. These considerations have manifested in kinetic sculptures, installations, animations, drawings and photographic works.
Woodward’s work has been nationally recognised through solo exhibitions, significant group exhibitions, prizes, grants, and public commissions. Of recent note was her inclusion in “Floating Land: Us and Them”, Australia’s premier art in the environment event, in 2023; a Creative Victoria Creator’s Fund grant in 2022; and winning the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture Rural and Regional Development Award in 2020. She completed her PhD in kinetic sculptural practice at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne, in 2014.
