Upcoming
January 16 - March 15, 2025
Memories of the Future
Laura Moore
Curated by Adam Lauder
Laura Moore, Nintendo Gameboy Tetris, 2021 (front), second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton. Photo: LFDocumentation
What will observers make of our discarded devices 1,000 years from now? Laura Moore’s timely meditations on the wastefulness of planned electronic obsolescence address an imagined future audience. The first mid-career survey Moore’s practice, Memories of the Future brings together several bodies of work across various media ranging from quilts to sculpture, mosaic, and drawing. These diverse works are united in their exploration of the ephemerality of technologically-mediated memory in an era of digital disposability.
Born in Chatham, Moore has longstanding connections to London and Southwestern Ontario – her early art education was at Fanshawe College and her grandfather was a Chatham stonemason. Moore’s works carry this familial inheritance in their ambition to monumentalize the ordinary in the tradition of anonymous artisans of the past. But the familiar environments memorialized by Moore are resolutely contemporary: the handheld game consoles and mobile phones of a still tangible past, as well as circuit boards salvaged from the curbside.
Foregrounding the paradox that devices created to externalize and preserve memory come into existence already imperilled by disposability, the artist proposes nonlinear models of time and memory. Moore observes that, “somebody can look at something and see the past and the future at the same time.” Such a Janus-faced temporality is evident in, for example, the artists’ use of the ancient medium of mosaic to cast media in an eerie future anterior. Similarly, the coiled outlines of Moore’s hyperrealist drawings of ancient ruins recall her three-dimensional representations of silicon circuit boards. Collectively, Moore’s work challenges us to consider how both our past and future are intricately connected to the devices that have become virtual extensions of our own bodies and personas – until the moment that we discard and replace them in a never-ending cycle..
About the artist
Laura Moore (b.1979) is a Toronto-based, multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sculpture.
Moore works primarily in stone, although her practice extends into drawing, wood, mould-making and
textiles. Notable exhibitions and outdoor public installations include Picture Stones in Bergen, Norway
(2024), Love Languages at Art Windsor Essex, Windsor (2024), Erratic Behaviour at the Kitchener-
Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Canada (2024), Memory Bathing at OpenArt Biennale, Örbero Sweden
(2022), Memory Sticks, Baneheia & Odderøya, Kristiansand, Norway (2022), Replika/Replica at Babel
Visningsrom for Kunst, Norway (2017) and Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark (2015). The artist is
a transient member of Studio Pescarella in Pietrasanta, Italy and recently attended the USF Verftet
residency in Bergen, Norway in 2024. She holds an MFA from York University and a BFA from the Nova
Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work is in the collections of the Royal Bank of Canada, the Bank of
Montreal, TD Bank, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, RIMOWA, Bell Canada, The Body Shop and numerous
private collections.
Related Programming
Artist Laura Moore and Curator Adam Lauder in conversation / Opening Reception
Saturday, January 18, 2:00 - 4:00pm
Opening remarks by the artist and curator at 2:30. Complimentary after hours parking available at select campus lots. Learn more
Free | Open to the public
Join us in celebrating the opening of Laura Moore’s exhibition Memories of the Future with an opening reception on Saturday, January 18th from 2:00-4:00pm. Artist Laura Moore and Curator Adam Lauder will be in attendance with opening remarks at 2:30.
Contemporary art, visual culture, and art history have long played an important role in facilitating constructive social, political, and diverse cultural conversations.
As such, McIntosh Gallery stands by its responsibility to support the artistic freedom of all exhibiting artists by providing a safe and respectful space for them to express themselves and showcase their work and research. The works in these exhibition express the views of their creators and do not reflect the position of McIntosh Gallery or Western University.
