ABOUT

Laurie Oxenford (b.1997) is an early career artist, curator and public art producer. Her interdisciplinary spatial practice speculates on the construction and potential of urban spaces and ecologies. 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 things Laurie’s work is inherently site-responsive and thrives on human and non-human exchange.

Whether it be assemblage, intervention or sculpture Laurie’s work 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 the 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 current member of artist collective, PUBLIC PALACE, co-founded with Grace Dewar in 2021. 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 and PURE POTENTIAL: do you know when you are *working*? at THE OLD LOCKUP / GUBBI GUBBI COUNTRY. Their latest projects TOTAL SERVICES and TOTAL TRANSCENDENCE are in development for presentation in 2023 – 2024. In July 2023 they will exhibit their latest body of work COSMIC USEFULNESS at Elevator ARI in Lismore.