Current
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 of 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..
Related Programming
Opening Reception
Saturday, January 18, 2:00 - 4:00pm
Artist Laura Moore and Curator Adam Lauder will be in attendance for the opening celebration of Memories of the Future. Remarks will take place at 2:30. Complimentary after hours parking available at select campus lots. Learn more
Free | Open to the public
Panel Discussion: Alissa Centivany, Laura Moore, and Kirsty Robertson
Wednesday, February 26, 5:30pm
Please join us for an engaging and enlightening panel discussion with Dr. Alissa Centivany, artist Laura Moore, and Dr. Kirsty Robertson as they address subjects such as memory, technology and waste, planned obsolescence, and the right to repair.
Dr. Alissa Centivany is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University working on technology policy, law, and ethics. She holds a PhD in Information and a JD specializing in intellectual property and technology law.
Dr. Kirsty Robertson is Director of Museum and Curatorial Studies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Curating in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University. Dr. Robertson is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, focusing on research into waste, pollution, the climate crisis, and the development of exhibitions and artworks with low carbon footprints.
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 this exhibition express the views of their creators and do not reflect the position of McIntosh Gallery or Western University.
