ABOUT

Laurie Oxenford (b.1997) is an early career artist, curator and public art producer. Her interdisciplinary spatial practice interrogates the potential of urban spaces and ecologies as they form and reform. Directed by materiality and site, she experiments at the intersection of everyday spatial practices such as architecture, construction, safety, and maintenance. By acknowledging the temporality of all situations and material Laurie’s work is inherently site-responsive, thriving on human and non-human exchange. Laurie introduces found everyday materials and objects to new critical paths with a responsive technical naivete where subversion, resourcefulness, and process take precedence.

Laurie Oxenford grew up on Bigambul Country and currently practices in the Yugambeh language region/Kombumerri Country. She completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Spatial Construction) at the University of Southern Queensland before being awarded the Bellmaine French Appreciation Travelling Scholarship (2018). She participated in a Professional Attachment with the City of Gold Coast (2019) and Art-Work Agency. In 2021 Laurie exhibited her sixth solo exhibition ‘FORCES OF PRODUCTION’ after a three month period as the LOCAL A.I.R at The WALLS GC, Gold Coast. She was commissioned by the Home of the Arts (HOTA), Gold Coast to realise a site-specific wall painting. Her recent work UNSPACES: Anthropic [Concrete] Rocks, developed through the Generate GC program with support from the RADF, Platform Arts Geelong and Third Space Gallery; was exhibited at SWELL Sculpture Festival 2022. In 2023 she spent four months as an intern at Triangle Asterides in Marseille, France. In 2024 she will complete a second Professional Attachment with HOTA as a Curatorial Assistant.

She is the Public Art Officer at Art-Work Agency and was previously the Lead Curator at First Coat Studios, Toowoomba. Laurie is a Generate GC artist (2021–2022).

Laurie is a Co-Director of artist collective, PUBLIC PALACE, founded with Grace Dewar in 2020. Their recent collaborative and curatorial projects include Objects as Social Practice at The Field ARI; Medium Rare: Discount Pool Supplies via The WALLS GC, TOTAL PROCESS at Floating Land Festival; ‘IT’S ONLY A GIFT (IF YOU SEE IT AS A GIFT)’ at Outer Space Brisbane; PURE POTENTIAL: do you know when you are *working*? at THE OLD LOCKUP, COSMIC USEFULNESS at Elevator ARI and TOTAL TRANSCENDENCE at Tropical Fruits. Their latest projects SITE OFFICE and TOTAL TRANSCENDENCE are in development for presentation in 2024 – 2025.