Rebecca Louise Law: Awakening
The debut of renowned British artist Rebecca Louise Law in the Islands, Awakening transforms two galleries into an immersive experience celebrating Hawai‘i’s deep connection to pua.
ON VIEW NOW THROUGH SEPTEMBER 10, 2023 • GALLERY 12 & 13
The debut of renowned British artist Rebecca Louise Law in the Islands, Awakening transforms two galleries into an immersive experience celebrating Hawai‘i’s deep connection to pua.
Rebecca Louise Law (British b.1980) is known for creating immersive installations with natural materials. Preserved flowers have become the signature of her most recognised works. Individually sewn and suspended, viewers are often invited to navigate through them, discovering the diverse forms, colours and textures of each specimen. These colossal works are intentionally equivocal and while themes of symbolism, consumerism, sustainability and life cycles often present themselves, the artworks also provide a harmonious sense of place for rest and contemplation takes precedence.
Law’s wider practice spans painting, print, weaving, glass, pottery and more. Her work explores the complexity of our human connection to nature with the intent to help inspire a deeper appreciation for it.
“The convenience of consumerism has made everything too easy and too fast. The lack of attention to detail and little understanding of where things come from made me want to focus the viewers' attention back to nature. Flowers are my paint and I work with space as my canvas, but as you enter any installation you are taken back to nature’s divine beauty. The human soul needs nature and time to appreciate all that the earth provides. Over the past 16 years, I have collected over one million flowers, re-using every flower I work with. Recently this has allowed my installations to be large enough to have a complete experience of nature. Installations that have completely enveloped the viewer are Beauty of Decay (2016) at Chandran Galley, Life in Death (2018) at Kew Gardens, Community (2018) at Toledo Museum of Art, and The Womb (2019) at Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Park and Gallery”
The persistence of time often provides context to Law’s work. Historically she has experimented with contrasting states; fresh, preserved, decayed. Most recently, Law has documented a year of daily nature observations in diaries – sketches, notes and videos for the exhibition Seasons.
A COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY
Approaching installation art as a painter, Law has strived to give each flower as much value as a drop of paint.
“By breaking down the flowers and preserving each head as an element of colour I settled on swapping my paints for flowers. Flowers became a 3D palette that allowed me to paint my expressions of nature in the air.”
Law’s earliest installation commissions saw her transform huge spaces, using fresh flowers that she allowed to dry within the space. No material would go to waste and any short-term installations would be brought back her studio to dry and re-sculpt. Her works were intended to invite viewers to witness materials preserving over time, allowing the viewer to visit an artwork multiple times for a renewed experience.
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