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Lauren Kelly
Born 1988
Lives and works in London, UK
www.laurenkelly.co.in
Lauren Kelly’s sculpture investigates the power of the fetish, the anthropomorphic,
the abject and hints at organic and bodily properties. Kelly is interested in the
immediate encounter we have with objects both haptically and spatially, what we
project onto an inanimate object, the sense of presence it has in the space, its own
material ontology and what is received by the senses to constitute its ‘objectness'.

Much of the work fl irts with ideas of fertility and fecundity and the twinning or
doubling of forms amplifi es the transgressive symmetry that alludes to the body.
Kelly fi nds that where the work plays with opposites, therein lies the tension. Where
welded steel structures add a functional rawness and nakedness, a heightened
softer cosmetic palette of pinks, ivories, and fl esh tones is found. A kind of dressed
and undressed.

There are undercurrents in the work which create uncertainty. Beneath the veneer
lies a ritualistic disembowelling that is sacrifi cial and almost cannibalistic, raising the
questions of which part is the predator and which is the prey? Depending on the
presence a sculpture emits, it can often take on a gender, they become ‘beings’,
not always human, not always animal but a personifi ed living thing nonetheless
with a character of its own.

Ingesting the Devoured is a monstrous, cannibalistic, ravenous, voluptuous form,
questioning which part is the predator and which is the prey. Kelly wanted to make
something beyond her own body, something unmanageable that dealt with
structure but not a human scale; although hinting at bodily properties in colour
and that it is intestinal, umbilical, limb-like. The two pink forms suggest sensitive
organs or connective tissue. The four ridiculously oversized balls act as bollards or
anchors, involving the viewer spatially as they navigate themselves around the
balls, walking around the sculpture, questioning how we encounter a sculpture.

LAUREN KELLY studied her BA at the Slade School of Fine Art where she was awarded The
Grocers’ Queen’s Golden Jubilee Scholarship. She completed her Masters at The Royal
College of Art in the Sculpture department where her work was purchased for the College’s
private collection. Her dissertation was entitled ‘The Sculptural Encounter - Through
Anthropomorphism, Character and Gender’, themes that Kelly herself, explores in her own
work. Kelly has worked as a builder for 6 years, a job that greatly infl uenced her artwork and
relationship to scale, material and process as well as attitudes to gender roles. She recently
won ‘The International Women’s Erotic Art Prize 2013’, and was awarded the Cowley – Coutts
Sculpture award in 2012. In December 2013, Kelly was commissioned to make 2 permanent
large-scale concrete sculptures in New York. Recent exhibitions include Muse at Lempertz,
Berlin, curated by artist Richard Wentworth, her solo show, Propagating at The Other Gallery,
Future Flesh at 223 Gallery, and her largest solo exhibition to date 'Digesting the Devoured' with
Bosse & Baum, London, 2014. Kelly was recently interviewed for Pangaea Sculptor’s Centre,
as a featured Sculptor speaking about her relationship to materials and taking inspiration Right: Ingesting the Devoured, 2013, Fabric,
from the experience of working on building sites. Kelly is currently the Artist in Residence at Scaffolding, Steel, Wood, Fibreglass, Paint.
Leighton Park. h: 400cm w: 150cm d: 132cm,
Artist’s Collection.

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