Artist: Laura Moore
Exhibition title: Memory Quilts
Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
Date: March 4 – April 1, 2023
Photography: Laura Findlay and Em Moor, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary
In the twenty-first century, discourse considering how technology informs human understandings of self, place, time, and culture has become super-charged as a result ever-expanding points of personal reference and immersion. While it’s challenging to envision a future that doesn’t reflect the ever-increasing presence of technology, it’s likewise difficult to recollect experiences not linked, at least implicitly, with some form of technological mediation. Whether tripping over a PlayStation console at a childhood sleepover, snapping pics on a Y2K-era digital camera, or receiving a text from a crush via a Nokia flip phone, electronic devices frequently act as conduits, companions, and centrepieces of human memories and notions of self.
Technology’s layered connections with individual and cultural memory are explored in Laura Moore’s Memory Quilts, in which the interdisciplinary artist presents large-scale textile assemblages inspired by obsolete circuit boards. Moore has been working with PCBs, or printed circuit boards, salvaged from small—often handheld—electronics for years. Typically, she references or recreates PCBs from old or damaged devices she’s owned, inherited, or found abandoned in the world. Intentionally revisiting many of the same source objects—primarily cell phones, computer monitors, and video game paraphernalia from the 1980s through 2000s — throughout her career, Moore recontextualizes the surreal admixture of intimacy and estrangement that the component parts of familiar technological forms can evoke.
Known for meticulously hand-carved stone and wood sculptures that reflect complex entwinements between nature, technology, waste, and sustainability, Moore’s recent engagement with textiles and quilting reflects a new trajectory. Cognizant of the environmental impacts of art making, Moore strives to work with second-hand materials; to this end, the fabrics that comprise the works in Memory Quilts mostly derive from hand-me-down clothing donated by friends. As in previous projects—such as the upscaled limestone circuit board in CX205E (2003) and the larger-than-life USBs sticks made from foraged branches and logs and carved wood acorns in Memory Bathing (2019)—Moore works on a resolutely human scale, quilting patterns in soft sculptures that depict circuitry from a Nintendo controller, a Gameboy Tetris, and a Canon digital camera to name a few.
In rendering typically unseen parts of disposable tech objects in zoomed-in detail, Moore reminds the viewer of both the human impact on the environment and the technological environment’s impact on us. Refreshingly, Moore seeks neither to affirm nor refute technological nostalgia, but poses the pressing question—what does technology mean to you and your environment in the present and in the future?
– Esmé Hogeveen
Laura Moore (b.1979) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sculpture. Moore works primarily in stone, although her practice extends into drawing, wood, mould-making and textiles. She received an MFA from York University and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Notable exhibitions include Memory Bathing at OpenArt Biennale, Örbero Sweden (2022), Replika/Replica at Babel Visningsrom for Kunst, Norway (2017), one man’s junk at the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie (2016), Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark (2015), Material World at the Indianapolis Art Centre in Indiana (2015), and Possible Futures: What is to be done? The Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Windsor (2014). Moore’s sculptures have been installed in numerous public settings, most notably at Google in Kitchener as part of the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area Biennial (CAFKA, 2014). The artist is a transient member of Studio Pescarella in Pietrasanta, Italy, and recently attended the Agder Kunstsenter residency in Kristiansand, Norway (2022). Her work is in the collections of the Royal Bank
of Canada, the Bank of Montreal, Toronto Dominion Bank, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, RIMOWA and numerous private collections.
Laura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Nintendo Gameboy Tetris [front], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 30 x 28 inches
Laura Moore, Nintendo Gameboy Tetris [back], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 30 x 28 inches
Laura Moore, Atari Pinball [front], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 26 x 22.5 inches
Laura Moore, Atari Pinball [back], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 26 x 22.5 inches
çLaura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Nintendo Skate or Die [front], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 63 x 30.5 inches
Laura Moore, Nintendo Skate or Die [back], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 63 x 30.5 inches
Laura Moore, International Stud Sensor [front], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 49 x 27.5 inches, 39 x 12.5 inches
Laura Moore, International Stud Sensor [back], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 49 x 27.5 inches, 39 x 12.5 inches
Laura Moore, TYrIB [front], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 16 x 23.5 inches
Laura Moore, TYrIB [back], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 16 x 23.5 inches
Laura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Original Nintendo Controller [back], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 54 x 20.5 inches
Laura Moore, Original Nintendo Controller [front], 2021, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 54 x 20.5 inches
Laura Moore, EDI [front], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 51 x 53 inches
Laura Moore, EDI [back], 2023, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 51 x 53 inches
Laura Moore, Memory Quilts, 2023, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Laura Moore, Canon Digital Camera [back], 2022, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 45 x 53 inches
Laura Moore, Canon Digital Camera [front], 2022, Second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton, 45 x 53 inches