My writing pivots around art, technology, politics, and how these things fit into our social structures. From redressing the art canon bias to distribution networks of edible seeds, writing provides a mode of intervention. Writing allows for a broader consideration of histories, concepts and connections and provides a mechanism to locate ideas within contexts as well as form a document against loss, a guarantee against forgetting or erasure and a means of distribution. More recently writing is becoming part of my working process and practice as an artist and a medium for collaboration with others.
Recent writing includes ekphrastic texts, critical responses and collaborative narratives.
“ The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art ‐ and, by analogy, our own experience ‐ more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means ” (Sontag,S. 1964, Against Interpretation p10)
Interalia Magazine, An online magazine dedicated to the interactions between the arts, sciences and consciousness.
Drawing Thoughts (Part 4) Issue 48 / March 2019 continues exploring current thinking on the practice and theory of Drawing, its creative, expressive and educational value, as well as its fundamental importance to translating and analysing the world.
Contributions include interviews with Juliette Losq, Joe Graham, Laura Hudson, Simon Head, Bethann Garramon Merkle, Ruth Chambers and Sophie Erin Cooper; articles by Katherine Gravett, Richard Bright, Gabriele Neher, Christopher Henshilwood and Karen Loise van Niekerk .
Nail House Book
Written from the artists perspective, this publication pieces together the research and ideas that underpin an ongoing series of art works and investigations into nail houses (buildings from which the individual or group refuse to be moved) and the broader socio-political contexts in which they and we exist.
Microedition, rizographic artzine: 1st Edition 30, [180x140mm] 70 pages. Riso printed in 2 colours (yellow and black), cover Gmund Bier Bock single colour printed front, hand folded, hand stitched. 2nd Edition as before with hand-painted cover. ed 20
Published Laura Hudson, September 2018, Flypaper Inc. London
Layout and riso printing by Elliott Denny.
Transubstantiation of Knowledge, 2018
A mixed reality site specific installation
Gallery 50b, V&A Medieval & Renaissance galleries, Commissioned London Design Fair 2018.
The Transubstantiation of Knowledge is a mixed-reality installation by Rachel Ara set in the Medieval & Renaissance galleries at the V&A, where holographic nuns are brought back from 15th Century Florence, via loop space. The Transubstantiation of Knowledge is based around a feminist narrative critiquing hyper-capitalism, post truths and how we look at things. The artefacts are in front of us but are we really looking at them? The story weaves together facts and possible fictions, manipulating some of the facts because we need to question who is telling our stories and what it is they think we should know.
Audio Narrative, published V&A Online, Performed London September 2018, Text and Audio Narrative.
Sweet, Sweet Spot, 2018
Published Barbican Art Centre, London
Barbican's Level G, 2018.
A companion text for Rachel Ara's American Beauty (a Trump L'oeil). American Beauty uses film, poetry, humour and CGI to create an incongruous image that references film history, utopian architecture and contemporary politics.
Citation: Hudson, Laura. 2018, Sweet Sweet Spot, American Beauty (a Trump L'oeil), Barbican Art Centre.
Promiscuous 8, 1995.
Published, Coil Magazine, London
Director of The Viva 8 Film Festival, Laura Hudson, discusses the promiscuous nature of the 8mm film gauge, its historical legacy and unique position as a radical tool capable of speaking from the margins and inserting itself into the mainstream like a Trojan Horse.
Citation: Hudson, Laura. 1995, Promiscuous 8, Coil Magazine, London
On the Evolution of the Ancestors
Essay by Laura Hudson, commissioned by Near Now, supported by Arts Council England.
Published Assemblage Magazine and Near Now, 2018
Citation: Citation: Hudson, Laura.On the Evolution of the Ancestors by Rachel Ara, 2018, Near Now.
An online resource for growing all things edible or useful.
A Kitchen Garden Notebook is a resource to share information about growing seasonal food and preserving the seeds of edible or useful crops. A place I can refer back-to and hope that other people might find it useful and add to the sum of knowledge.
A small measure toward global food security and against corporatisation of the seeds of edible plants.